Harry Potter and Death's Bargain
by DarkLordHufflepuff
Summary: Response to Reptilia28's challenge. Harry dies and meet's his angel of death, who informs him he has died six times before. Now he goes back for his last chance as Death's Avatar to set things right and avoid the apocalypse. HHr Evil!Dumbledore Evil!Weasleys
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: This story is a response to Reptilia28's challenge. I will be switching off writing this with my other fics so there may occasionally be long gaps between chapters being posted, but I will never abandon a fic without warning.**

**Disclaimer: Harry Potter and all associated characters belong to JKR and others. That being said the cosmology presented in this story is as much of an original creation as is possible when dealing with something that has been written about since the dawn of time.**

Harry Potter and Death's Bargain

Chapter 1

It is amazing how much thinking a person can squeeze into the last seconds of their life. Harry Potter had plenty of time to wonder about how his life had come to this moment, standing in the forbidden forest watching the sickly green killing curse as it seemed to crawl toward him. A small portion of his brain informed him that the curse was not actually moving any slower than normal, he was just thinking faster than he ever had before. There was definitely something inherently unfair about the fact that his brain waited until the end to kick into high gear, if only his brain had worked this fast when his thoughts could be put to use, maybe his grades would have been better. That would have made Hermione proud. Oh Merlin, Hermione was going to be pissed at him for going and getting himself killed. If Harry wasn't absolutely certain that he would never see his best friend again in this life he would have been terrified of facing her reaction, as it was she would probably spend the first few minutes of her afterlife hexing the shit out of him. Wait a second, when had he started thinking of Hermione as his best friend? Maybe it had always been that way, it had definitely been true after fourth year, Ron had abandoned him, but Hermione had stood by him through everything. Sure sixth year things had been... tense, but they had never stopped being friends, and it wasn't like Ron had been a better friend back then anyways. It really didn't matter now though, he was going to die, and he knew it. Why couldn't that green light move a little faster? All these thoughts were making it hard to stoically accept his fate.

Suddenly Harry was standing in a room, in front of a desk, and sitting behind the desk was a petite blonde woman. "Hello again Mr. Potter." The woman said sweetly with a kind smile.

"Please, ca-" Harry began

"No problem Harry." the blonde interrupted him.

"How did you know that I was going to ask you to call me Harry?" Harry was quickly becoming confused.

"It's always the first thing you say when you come in here Harry. Your second question is usually what my name is. It's Sharron by the way, unfortunately damn Greeks couldn't pronounce it right and now everyone thinks I'm some creepy old guy who works on a boat, and ever since we had to close down the customer service entrance on the River Styx I can't tell anyone to let people know what my name really is, but I digress. How are you feeling this time, anything you want to get off your chest before I let Adrian know you're here?"

"Um, I think I'm good, but I'm a little confused. You keep saying that I've been here before, but I don't even know where I am, and I don't remember ever being here before." Harry said calmly.

"Oh right, you're just always so polite that I forget you don't actually remember dieing before. Well Harry, it's like this, you just died, you are currently standing in the waiting room, I'm the receptionist here. Once you're ready I'll be passing you along to your assigned Angel of Death who will handle all the paperwork involved in your death." Sharron explained.

"So I'm dead," Sharron nodded sympathetically "I guess that was kind of inevitable, might as well get moving on then." Harry said a little sadly.

"You're definitely taking better this time. Just go through this door here, and head to the end of the hall." Sharron said with a sad smile. Sharron had grown to like Harry Potter after all his visits to her waiting room, but she had never seen him be okay with his death before, except the first time he had come into her office. It was really heart-wrenching to see an eight year-old child who's life was so terrible that they actually welcomed death.

"Thanks Sharron, I guess this is goodbye." Harry smiled to the blonde before going through the door. The hall was long, and it was beige. It was absolutely amazing to Harry that there could ever be a place in any world where the most descriptive word that could be applied was _beige_. The hall absolutely screamed quiet, creeping, bureaucracy. When Harry reached the end of the hall there was a single door set into the wall, Harry walked up to the door and knocked.

"Enter." came a silky voice from the other side of the door. Harry opened the door and looked inside the room. Sitting behind a large ornate desk carved from some sort of black wood was a man who looked to be in his mid forties. He had short salt and pepper hair, a well trimmed beard, and gray eyes hidden behind a pair of wire framed glasses. "Mr. Potter, back again are we. Tell me Mr. Potter, is it really so difficult to just _not die_. All you had to do was beat one second rate Dark Lord. That's it! He never even had all that much going for him in the power department, and even less when it came to sanity. All you needed was one half-way decent plan and he would have been beaten easily. _But NO_, you have to go and die _SEVEN FUCKING TIMES!_ Seven, and now management is breathing down my neck because your on your last shot from Fate, and if you screw this up we could end up pushing Armageddon up twelve centuries. And the worst part is it's not even your fault. If it weren't Albus Poncy Worthless Bastard Dumbledore, we could have avoided most, if not all, of those death, and if not we could have played our trump card a hell of a lot sooner. _But No_, Albus Dumbledore can't leave anything alone. You were supposed to learn about the prophecy the first time you ran into Riddle,hunt down the horcruxes before he ever regained a body, and then kick his ugly ass one more time for good measure, all while hooking-up with your soul-mate, some Granger girl, so you can both live to the ripe old age of 243."

Harry for the most part just waited for the storm to pass, but then something stuck to his brain as it went rushing past "Wait, Hermione is my soul-mate? That makes sense... but wait a minute that doesn't make sense. I mean right at this moment, you say the word soul-mate, and the only person who comes to mind is Hermione, she's smart, kind, understanding, and beautiful. She's the best friend I've ever had, and she's the only person I can think of who I know sees the real me, and not the Boy-Who-Lived." he said the title with unmasked disdain "But up until the moment I died if you had asked me I would have said I was in love with Ginny Weasley, I would have said she was funny, and witty, and beautiful, but now I think about her, and she's confrontational, temperamental, her humor is cruel, and now that I think about it, _I don't even like redheads_, not to mention she was a creepy stalker up through fourth year."

"Yes, well, you can thank your illustrious headmaster for that." The man behind the desk said sarcastically. "Unfortunately I can't really go into details at the moment, but I can tell you that at the end of your life you were under the influence of love potions keyed to Ginny Weasley. Unfortunately we're a bit off topic, so let's start from the beginning, my name is Adrian Lichfield, and I am your assigned death consultation liaison, or Angel of Death. You have just recently died for the seventh time. The first time you died was when your Uncle beat you to death on your eighth birthday. the second time you were killed by a troll because Ronald 'Troll-Brain' Weasley couldn't perform a simple levitation charm. The third time you were killed by a cursed bludger that beat you to death because it kept coming after you even after you were unconscious on the ground, though to be fair the house elf didn't really know too much about the magic he was playing with. The fourth time you were poisoned by a basilisk, and since Dumbledore hadn't given explicit instructions to his phoenix to keep you alive Fawkes didn't heal you. The fifth time you were killed by a dragon, and the sixth time, well your little distraction in the hall of prophecy went horribly right and you ended up with a shard of glass through your neck, bled out right there on the floor. Your most recent death I'm sure you understand at least the mechanics of, even if you don't understand the reasons behind it, but the most important thing you need to know is that there was never a horcrux in your scar, Dumbledore knew there wasn't but let you believe it anyways. Now because of the regulations regarding the activities of the Neutral Powers you are only allowed to be sent back to the mortal plane seven times, so no matter what you are on your last shot."

"Neutral Powers?" Harry asked with a confused look on his face.

"Yes the Neutral Powers are the powers of the middle planes, our job is to prolong the game that the Upper Powers, those you know of as gods and angels, and the Lower Powers, those you know of as devils and demons, have been playing since the dawn of time. The Neutral Powers, Death, Fate, Destiny, Chance, Nature, Love, Time, Chaos, and Order, are allowed to intervene in the mortal plane within certain limits to prevent direct intervention from either side. " Adrian explained slowly so as not to overload Harry with too much information.

"And direct intervention would be bad?"

"Very, if either side sent forces to the mortal plane the other side would be forced to respond in kind. Even a minor conflict between angels and demons could have apocalyptic consequences. In the early twentieth century one angel and one demon simply spoke to each other in Siberia, the resulting blast could be seen world wide and flattened 830 square miles of forest. Had they actually fought each other it probably would have destroyed Asia. Moving on though, Fate is allowed to determine the acceptable time of death for every soul, and assign them a number of second chances ranging from one to seven, however the entire world population can never have an average above two, so they have to be spread carefully, you for instance received the full seven, which you will be using up the last of shortly. Your friend Cedric Diggory received two which he had already used up before he went with you to that cemetery, Sirius Black used all of his three, and Albus Dumbledore used only one of his five before dying at his appointed time. Your soul-mate was given five, and has used up three of them, the first time after the troll beat you to death it turned on her while Weasley ran away. That was the only time we had both of you in the waiting room together - Sharron says it was quite sweet watching the two of you together. The second time she was killed by the basilisk before Christmas of your second year, and the third time was when Dolohov hit her with that flame curse in the Department of Mysteries. The other Neutral Powers are able to intervene in a more direct way by influencing related events on the mortal plane, you will note that none of your deaths occurred at the claws of the very dangerous inhabitants of the forbidden forest, despite your many trips into its depths, you can thank Nature for that. Unfortunately Death is only able to intervene by appointing an Avatar, in order to appoint an avatar though someone on the mortal plane must have gone against the natural order and cheated Death, however only someone who is aware of the cheat and how it was done can be sent back as an Avatar of Death, so until you knew about the horcruxes you could not even be presented with the option as telling you about them would have been overstepping our limits."

"So you want me to be your Avatar? What exactly does that entail, do I get super powers or something?" Harry was starting to get excited about this.

"Not quite Mr. Potter, as our Avatar we have more leeway to when we return you to, and we can also return you with all your memories intact, including ones that were removed before your death. In order to protect the knowledge you have of the afterlife your mind will be protected from any form of mental magics including obliviation. We will also be able to show you a few shortcuts for certain esoteric branches of magic. And as is customary we can grant you an item of power known as an Icon"

"Wait I've had memories removed, what memories?" The idea that someone had been messing around in his head really pissed Harry off.

"Your Headmaster felt that your relationship with Miss Granger was unacceptable, so every time you two got together he would remove any memory of it. He obliviated both of you twice in your first year, five times in your second year, eight times in your third year, twelve times in your fourth year, seventeen times in your fifth year and forty-eight time in your sixth year."

"I think I would have noticed if I had that many huge gaps in my memory." Harry stated curtly.

"Unfortunately no gaps were left, the memories were simply replaced with other memories, by sixth year Dumbledore was growing concerned that you two were practically impossible to keep apart so the new memories were designed to drive a wedge between you. When that didn't work he switched to using love potions to get you with the young Miss Weasley."

"So all those arguments I had with Hermione during sixth year..."

"You were actually off snogging, or shagging, occasionally learning something Dumbledore didn't want you to know. The two of you actually got started on the animagus transformation six times, Miss Granger taught you the first year of material for Ancient Runes and Arithmancy three times, and you had originally signed up to take those instead of Divination, and requested to transfer out of Divination twice."

"Why would Dumbledore not want me to take those classes? It isn't like I got anything out of Divination."

"Arithmancy and Ancient Runes would have taught you to think critically, your grades as a whole would probably have improved, and most importantly you would have not believed his final lie. With the knowledge you would have gained you would have realized that storing a horcrux inside of you would make about as much sense as storing bacterial cultures in a blast furnace."

"And why was it so important to him for me to throw my life away?" Harry was really starting to get upset with Dumbledore

"So your legend could never surpass his own. He spent years trying to kill you off so the prophecy could be nullified and he could defeat Riddle, but he always had that one last plan up his sleeve. Even when he was dieing he couldn't let go of that plan, besides with you dead his portrait could claim all the credit for the entire plan and his legend would still grow. Back to business though, because Miss Granger is your soul-mate every time you two kiss you store a backup copy of the other person's mind, so when you go back all you will need to do is kiss her and all her memories up until the moment of your last kiss will be restored."

"I don't suppose you could tell me when that last kiss was could you?"

"It was shortly before you left the tent to find the sword of Gryfindor, Weasley obliviated you both when he returned and began feeding you love potions again. So you'll only have to get her caught up on a couple months worth of stuff."

"Isn't that cheating though, giving Hermione back her memories, I mean I'm the Avatar not her." Harry was getting to the point where things were making less and less sense.

"It would be if Death were the Power involved, but Love is the Power that handles soul-mates so anything they do is on their heads. As much as I would like to give you all the details now, you have enough to get started with, so there are only a couple of decisions left to make before we send you back. First we need to decide what Icon to give you that will be of most use to you."

"Okay what kind of things can an Icon do? Can I get some examples."

"You are already familiar with three Icons of Death, though you may not have realized what they were at the time." Adrian said with a sly smile.

"The Deathly Hallows!"

"Precisely Mr. Potter. Ignotus Pevrell was an Avatar and he was granted the Cloak as his Icon, in order to complete his task he gathered two other Icons of old and gave them to his brothers, but after the job was done Cadmus and Antioch abused the power of the Icons and were struck down for their presumption. Now as for what we can give you, it will need to be something you can explain having without arousing suspicion... shoes are always useful... perhaps a nice coat... Ah I know we can replace your glasses. It isn't uncommon for wizards to place charms on glasses so they wouldn't arouse undue suspicion, and we can give them all sorts of neat functions. What do you think?"

"Glasses would work I guess, I don't have any shoes or coats that I would want to have to keep with me forever." Harry said with a shrug.

"Good then let's get the paperwork filled out for those... let me see... where is that form... Ah here we go, Icon Requisition Form 1037R-B." Adrian pulled a stack of papers out of one of the drawers in his desk and began filling them out. "Now if you'll just sign here." Adrian handed Harry a pen and indicated where he needed to sign.

"You use pen and paper here?" Harry asked as he handed the forms back.

"Of course, does this look like the middle ages to you? Some of the liaison offices have already started going digital and they figure we'll be fully upgraded, networked and paper free by the turn of the century. Though why it's so important to be paper free when the paper isn't even real is beyond me. Now we need to decide when to send you back, unfortunately our options are rather limited. We can only send you back through when the fabric of reality between this plane and your location on the mortal plane is thin enough. Unfortunately you have never been close enough to a summoning to jump through an open portal, though we could send you back through the veil, but that puts things rather late so we'll have to use the natural fluctuations of the fabric to send you back, which only leaves peak moments of fluctuation. So Halloween around 11 o'clock at night. Any year would work, but your fourth year would probably be best since it will allow you to distance yourself from Weasley easily enough." Harry just nodded his brain was far to overloaded to make any good decisions right now. "Good sign here, here, and here." Harry signed quickly in the indicated spots "Excellent now once you get your Miss Granger up to date I'll be popping in to answer any more questions and to deliver your new glasses, so don't take to long." Harry nodded again "Now, when you walk out that door you'll be returned to the mortal plane immediately, good luck."

Harry stood up and faced the door he had come in through. He reached out and turned the door knob, but when the door opened it looked out on a pure white expanse rather than the beige hallway. Taking a deep breath Harry stepped through the door.

**A/N: I hope you have all enjoyed this beginning. For those of you who didn't get the reference, the Tunguska Event of 1908 was the result of a _conversation_ between _one _angel and _one_ demon the resulting explosion was a thousand times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. The result of this is a Cold War between gods and devils for the souls of humanity, the exact reason for this will be revealed later on.**

**The original challenge from Reptilia28 is as follows**

**STORYLINE:**

***Harry is killed at 17 during a fight with Voldemort. He's sent to his Death's office (explained later) and finds out that this isn't the first time that this has happened.**

***Harry's Death (who can have a human name) is mad at his arrival. Apparently, people dying before their time is a black mark on the various Deaths' records, and Harry is getting perilously close to getting this particular one fired.**

***When Harry asks what was supposed to have happened, Death goes off on a rant saying how he was supposed to have killed Voldemort, found his soulmate ("Some Granger girl...") and lived to be a centennial age. But since Harry keeps getting into life-threatening situations for one reason or another, he keeps dying before that happens. Harry is surprised about the soulmate part.**

***Death gives Harry a paper to sign that allows him to retain his memories (the previous times, he wasn't given this option for some reason). Harry is deposited to a previous time of the writer's choosing.**

***Eventually, Harry gets it right. He kills Voldemort, gets the girl, and lives to a ripe old age of whatever. And Death doesn't get fired.**

**REQUIREMENTS:**

***Harry had to have died at least three times before this one.**

***The memory keeping contract must be included.**

***Death must refer to Hermione as "some Granger girl" when Harry's soulmate turns up in his rant.**

***Obviously, must be H/Hr.**

***Have fun.**

**OPTIONAL:**

***Dumbledore's manipulations can be a factor in Harry's premature demises.**


	2. Chapter 2

**Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter.**

Harry Potter and Death's Bargain

Chapter 2

Harry opened his eyes. He was lying in his four poster bed in Gryfindor Tower. A quick _tempus_ charm informed him that it was 11:13 PM Halloween 1994. He was back, back from a dark and dangerous future, a future where he had faced death at the hands of a madman, and if everything he had been told was true then there was going to be hell to pay. All of that could wait until morning though, right now there was nothing he wanted more than to sleep.

As Harry slept he remembered. He remembered that first Halloween at Hogwarts when he had rescued Hermione from the troll, but more importantly he remembered what had transpired afterward, the conversation in the common room they had after everyone else had gone to bed. The confessions about their lives before Hogwarts, the apologies, the acceptance, the hug, the _kiss_, their first kiss. The next couple of weeks had been wonderful they spent all their free time together in the library or by the lake, and then it happened. Dumbledore came up to them as they reentered the castle spouted some meaningless platitudes about the 'Greater Good' and without further comment obliviated them. For two weeks they had been together, happy, and Weasley free, but Dumbledore had ruined everything. He remembered the end of First Year, Hermione giving him a kiss for luck before he went to face Quirrel, their second first kiss. The last week of term had been as wonderful as the first two weeks of November, but then Dumbledore had done it again, erased their love for each other with a wave of his wand and inserted Ron Weasley back into their lives. The pattern repeated itself every time a little different but always the same, they would fall back into forgotten patterns for a week or even two and then Dumbledore would step in. By the end of fifth year they had had forty-four first kisses, each one special and unique, each one stolen from them by an interfering old man. Harry might have been willing to just let Ron be as long as he left them alone, but what he remembered about sixth year changed that. Harry and Hermione and been obliviated seven times over the summer by Mr. and Mrs. Weasley, and each one had been preceded by Ron or Ginny discovering them together. When they got back to school the pattern continued, but with ever shorter gaps between repetitions. Each time Dumbledore implanted the memory of an argument in their minds they would seek each other out to apologize and those mutual apologies rapidly became much more physical. Then suddenly Harry found himself inexplicably in love with Ginny looking back it was clear he was on love potions, he even remembered a conversation he had with Hermione where she had expressed concerns about the possibility that his feelings were artificially induced and when they had brought this up with Dumbledore he had once again obliviated them though he first placed a compulsion charm on both of them to ignore the possibility that Harry was being given love potions. Then Ron had left them in the tent during what should have been their seventh year and after a couple of days the love potions had worn off and they were back together, but it was to good to last and Ron had returned and stolen their happiness once again.

Harry awoke the next morning and wanted nothing more than to find Hermione, luckily he knew exactly where to look. He remembered exactly what had transpired on this day originally, what had _really_ happened, all he had to do was repeat it exactly and he would have _his_ Hermione back, then they could set to work saving the world.

Harry headed down to the Entrance Hall and was intercepted by Hermione as she was walking out of the Great Hall holding a stack of toast. "Hey Harry, I thought you might want to avoid the Great Hall for a little while," Harry gave her a genuine smile as he took the toast "Want to go for a walk?"

"Good idea." Harry said as he lead the way out toward the lake. As he ate the toast he told Hermione about what had happened following his name coming out of the Goblet of Fire the night before, luckily the memory of this conversation was still fresh in his mind as his own memory of that night had gotten fuzzy in the three and a half years since it had happened. When he finished the toast he looked Hermione right in the eyes "Thank you Hermione. This means a lot to me, I could kiss you right now." Harry said jokingly. Hermione blushed and mumbled something that Harry couldn't quite hear "Sorry what was that?" Harry asked with a smile as Hermione's blush deepened.

"I said 'then why don't you'." Hermione told her shoes.

Harry moved in front of her and put his hands on her shoulders, when Hermione raised her head Harry looked her right in the eye, smiled and said "Okay." He leaned forward and as their lips met both closed their eyes.

After a few moments Hermione broke the kiss and opened her eyes. "Harry, where did the tent go? Harry, why do you look fourteen? Harry, how did we get to Hogwarts?"

Harry pulled Hermione into a hug "Hermione, calm down for a second. The short version is that we are back in fourth year. You're a little behind me on events so here's what you're missing Ron came back a few hours from your last memory, I had found the sword of Gryfindor, and he found me, he destroyed the locket, and when he got back to the tent he lost it when he realized we were together, so he obliviated us so we would forget that we were in love with each other. He spent the next few weeks feeding me love potions so I would want to be with Ginny instead of you. We had to break into Gringotts to get Hufflepuff's cup out of the Lestrange vault and then went to Hogwarts to get the last horcrux. Riddle showed up with all his death eaters and there was a huge battle, we went to find Nagini so we could finish everything off and we watched as Snape was killed, he left me a few memories on Dumbledore's orders. Apparently he was acting on Dumbledore's orders and he was supposed to tell me that I was a horcrux and that I had to let Riddle kill me, so I went out into the forest to face him. I died and went to some kind of waiting room, apparently I've died a few times before, but because I knew about how Riddle cheated Death when I died this time I was appointed as Death's Avatar on the mortal plane, so I was sent back to last night with all my memories. Apparently if Riddle isn't beaten the world could end so a lot of other worldly interests are helping however they can which is how you got your memories back." Harry explained as best he could, all the while holding Hermione close.

"Harry are you sure Dumbledore said you were a horcrux? It doesn't make any sense why would he have made you into a horcrux? When would he have done it?" Hermione immediately went into critical thinking mode.

"Yes he said it, but apparently it wasn't true, and he knew it. Hermione do you know anything about undoing memory charms, because Ron isn't the first person to obliviate us, and the memories that were removed will tell you a lot that you need to know about Dumbledore."

"Yeah, you think about the specific memory you want to restore and cast the spell _memoratus_, like this" she demonstrated the wand movement. Harry performed the spell over and over on Hermione, and each time he did the scowl on Hermione's face became more pronounced "How could they do that to us?" Hermione finally demanded of no one in particular.

"Greed." came the voice of Adrian Lichfield, apparently from nowhere. "They did it for greed, Dumbledore didn't want to lose his power and prestige, the Weasleys wanted Harry's money, and you stood in their way of that. Dumbledore told the Weasleys that Harry would die in the war against Riddle and suggested to them that Ginny should marry him before it came to that. Dumbledore wanted Harry to die so he wouldn't be outshone by the vanquisher of the newest Dark Lord just as he outshone the wizard who defeated the Dark Lord before Grindlewald, and you wouldn't have let him go off and die for nothing." The entire time he was explaining the motivations of the Weasleys and Dumbledore Adrian was slowly fading into existence "It is a pleasure to finally meet you Miss Granger."

"Who are you? And where did you come from?" Hermione demanded reaching instinctively for her wand

"Hermione, meet Adrian Lichfield, Angel of Death." Harry quickly made introductions "You got my new glasses?"

"Yeah here you go," Adrian handed Harry a pair of wire frame glasses "they automatically adjust to the wearer's eyesight, looks through illusion magic, zoom function, adjusts for ambient light, and if you touch the frame a you can activate a few different vision settings, specifically mage sight, thermal, and a cool little thing called death sight, lets you see how many chances someone has left. Given any thought to what your plans are?"

Harry took the glasses and tried them on he noticed a definite improvement over his old pair "Isn't that your job?"

"No we are only allowed to provide you with information to allow you to carry out your plans, the plans need to be your own." Adrian explained impatiently.

"Well if we can deal with all of Riddle's horcruxes before he can come back, we can focus on dealing with Riddle after he comes back, unfortunately any plans we make Dumbledore will try his best to screw up, probably by trying to obliviate us again." Harry mused.

"Well he won't be able to obliviate you, but he could still obliviate Miss Granger, and that could be inconvenient." Adrian corrected after a few seconds.

"So we need some way to get rid of Dumbledore without drawing attention to ourselves." Hermione said after considering things for a while.

"If we put him on the trail of the ring he'll probably end up getting cursed again, delay Snape a few minutes and we could cut Dumbledore life expectancy down to a couple of months, however we still have to deal with him for a few months and he'll try to split us up. Probably try even harder to come up with a permanent solution like he did in sixth year."

"We need to do something that will make it impossible to make our relationship disappear. We could be a little more public about it this time." Hermione suggested.

"He could still slip us potions to break us up so we would get together with the Weasleys." Harry countered.

"You could always get married." Adrian suggested. Harry and Hermione were both speechless for a few seconds before they simultaneously began raising objections to the idea. "Hang on just hear me out, if you two were married there would be nothing Dumbledore could do since there is no divorce in the wizarding world. Your both over fourteen so legally you can get married. Besides based on your history together you can't really expect me to believe that you two are opposed to being together for the rest of your lives."

"Won't that arouse suspicion? How would we explain it without letting something slip." Hermione objected.

"It wouldn't arouse suspicion if you 'accidentally' got married." Adrian replied with air quotes.

"How exactly does someone get accidentally married?" Harry asked with a slight chuckle.

"At its core a magical wedding is two people making a magical oath to each other. If two people make oaths close enough to the ones used in an official wedding the result is exactly the same." Hermione almost instinctively supplied.

"Correct, I can see now why Love was so smug about their decision to put you and Mr. Potter together, and why they were so upset that Harry was not fully able to utilize your talents." Adrian said with a hint of awe in his voice at how quick Hermione had been on the uptake "Accidental marriages happen occasionally, especially among fourth and fifth year muggle raised students, and given the betrayal of your supposed friend you could say that you made the oaths to assure each other that you were always going to be there for each other."

"So we just make an oath and poof we're married?" Harry asked sceptically "Then what, how do we make sure people find out, because I don't think it will work if no one knows we're married."

"Well, if that's your only concern, don't worry. First the magic released when you make those oaths are flashy enough to make anyone inquire into what happened, and the Hogwarts wards will notice your change in status and your head of house will be informed automatically." Adrian explained before he was interrupted by a shrill beeping sound, he immediately reached into his pocket and pulled our what looked like a pocket watch, but when he opened it it projected a complex series of symbols that arranged themselves into multiple concentric circles all of which were rotating at different rates. "Oh my, I really must be going. If you are going to go ahead with getting married, just make sure that the oaths you make include fidelity, protection, care, and love. That should ensure the desired results. Before I go here are some notes on subjects you might want to look into. I'll check in again in December." Adrian pulled out a small bundle of parchments and handed them to Harry, and as soon as Harry had taken them Adrian faded from view.

After a few minutes of contemplation Harry turned to look at Hermione "So, what do you think? From a purely practical angle it seems like an excellent plan, unless you see a potential problem that I'm missing." Harry finally said nervously.

"Well, I agree that it's a technically sound plan," Hermione started "but are you sure..." she continued, letting a little of her deeply ingrained insecurities show, before Harry stopped her.

"Hermione, I know we're young, whether we're fourteen and fifteen,or seventeen and eighteen, but I also know that there is no one else in the world I would want to spend the rest of my life with than you. The times when we have been together are the best memories I have, and nothing has hurt more than the times we have been apart have been the most painful." Harry started, barely keeping his voice under control "Hermione Jean Granger, will you marry me?"

Hermione knew Harry well enough to know what he was going to ask before he had even finished his first sentence, so it took her less than a tenth of a second to respond "Yes, Harry, of course I will."

"So, should we do this now, or should we wait?" Harry asked, now that Hermione had agreed he had no idea how to proceed.

"If we're going to act like it was an accident, we'll have to do it now, so I guess I'll start." Hermione said taking hold of Harry's hands and looking into his eyes. "I, Hermione Jean Granger, swear to stand by you, Harry James Potter, in all things, to protect you from harm, to help you to the full extent of my power and to love you from this day forth until the end of time." As she finished her oath a thin band of golden light extended from her right hand to wrap around Harry's left wrist.

"I, Harry James Potter, swear to stand by you, Hermione Jean Granger, in all things, to protect you from harm, to help you to the full extent of my power, and to love you from this day forth until the end of time." Harry made the same oath, and as he finished another band of golden light extended from his right hand to wrap around Hermione's left wrist. When the band of light had finished wrapping itself around her wrist both bands of light flashed brightly and a simple gold ring appeared on their ring fingers. Feeling that it was only proper Harry leaned forward and kissed his new wife.

"We should probably go find Professor McGonagall." Hermione said once they had separated.

Harry took Hermione's hand and they started walking toward the castle. They had just walked through the front doors into the Entrance Hall when McGonagall found them "Mister Potter, Miss Granger, please come with me." Harry and Hermione shared a look of surprise at how quickly McGonagall had come to look for them while McGonagall led them to her office. When they entered her office McGonagall motioned for them to take a seat in front of her desk while she sat down in her own chair. McGonagall looked across the desk at them for a few moments, and Harry would have sworn that there was the merest hint of a smile on her lips, before she spoke "I would like to begin by assuring you that you are not in trouble, but I must ask you to tell me what you were doing out on the grounds this morning."

Hermione was the first to respond to the professor's request "Well, after last night I thought Harry would rather avoid the Great Hall this morning so I grabbed him some toast, and then we went for a walk around the lake. We were talking about stuff and then the conversation turned to Ron being a prat and calling Harry a liar when Harry said he didn't put his name in the Goblet of Fire. Harry was really upset about how Ron was acting so I promised him that I would never abandon him, and then he promised me the same thing, and there was this flash of light and these rings appeared, so we were going to the library to try to find out what happened when we ran into you." Hermione explained in her usual form, barely stopping for breath.

"Well Miss Granger I can tell you exactly what happened. It would seem that the promises you and Mr. Potter made were considered by your magic to be oaths, and those oaths resulted in the two of you becoming married." McGonagall explained slowly. Harry and Hermione did their best to look surprised, and apparently succeeded as McGonagall didn't say anything about their reactions. "Now I'm sure you two will need some time to talk about this, but before I let you go I am required by the school charter to inform you that as a married couple you are entitled to private quarters if you desire them."

Harry and Hermione looked at each other and in the space of a few seconds they carried out an entire silent conversation consisting of a series of slight gestures and facial expressions. When they had silently come to a consensus about this unexpected decision they turned to face the professor and said simultaneously "We'll take them."

"Very well then, I will make the necessary arrangements, however as the term has already begun I will need to clear this with the Headmaster. I don't foresee a problem, but Professor Dumbledore can be unpredictable when making decisions concerning you Mr. Potter." McGonagall told them.

"If Dumbledore denies our request simply inform him that Harry is exercising his right as a Triwizard Champion to request private accommodations. Per tournament bylaws Dumbledore would be unable to refuse the request." Hermione said after a moment, both Harry and Professor McGonagall took the fact that Hermione was so familiar with the rules governing a tournament that hadn't been held in centuries in stride.

"I will do just that, if there is nothing else you two wish to discuss with me-"

"Actually Professor, I was wondering if it would be possible for me to change my elective courses. I know that it's against school policy for students to change electives after the first term of third year, but considering that I am not required to take exams this year due to being forced into the tournament, I was wondering if an exception could be made so that I could drop Divination and switch to Arithmancy and Ancient Runes?" Harry asked tentatively.

"I can speak with Professors Babbling and Vector about it, but I must warn you, even if they allow you to sit their classes you will have to most likely take those two exams to be allowed to continue those classes in your fifth year, and they are both quite difficult." McGonagall said.

"I understand how difficult they are Professor, Hermione has been teaching me the material since February. I had been planning to continue studying outside of the class and sit the OWLs and possibly take the classes starting in sixth year, but with the tournament I was hoping for the opportunity to get out of Divination, and get a better understanding of the two subjects." Harry said confidently, this was only partly a lie, Hermione had actually started teaching Harry Arithmancy and Ancient Runes in the February of their third year, but hadn't gotten very far before Dumbledore had removed their memories of it, and he had been planning at that time to sit the OWLs for those subjects without taking the classes.

"Very well Mr. Potter, I will inform the professors involved of your request and get back to you when I have an answer, I will also have a house elf show you to your new quarters when they are ready. I will see you both later Mr. Potter, Mrs. Potter." McGonagall dismissed them with a small smile when she called Hermione Mrs. Potter, which had caused Hermione to smile brightly and blush.

After they left McGonagall's office Harry and Hermione made their way to an empty classroom. Once they were inside the classroom Harry locked and sealed the door while Hermione cast a number of privacy charms. As soon as the charms were up Harry pulled Hermione into a passionate kiss.

When they finally came up for air Hermione gave Harry a sweet smile "As much as I would love to keep going, we'll have plenty of time for that later. Right now I want to ask you a few questions, and then we should start looking through the notes Adrian gave you. First I want to know why you are so certain that Dumbledore will go after the ring now instead of waiting until after Riddle comes back."

"Because the ring isn't like the other horcruxes. Do you remember that symbol we kept finding?" Hermione nodded "Well it's the symbol of the Deathly Hallows, which are the the three items mentioned in the 'Tale of the Three Brothers'." Harry told her. Seeing that Hermione was about to interrupt he pressed on "Yes the story was based on reality Ignotus Pevrell, whose grave we saw in Godric's Hollow was the youngest brother, my many-great-grandfather, and an Avatar of Death. The cloak was his Icon, and was passed down through his family until it came to my father, and eventually me."

"What does that have to do with the ring though?" Hermione asked impatiently.

"The stone in the ring is the Resurrection Stone. The Stone was an Icon given to an earlier Avatar and Ignotus gave it to his brother Cadmus so that he could help in his quest. The Wand from the story was also an Icon which Ignotus found and gave to his oldest brother Antioch. The wand was eventually found by the wand-maker Gregorovich, but it was stolen by Gellert Grindlewald, and now it belongs to Dumbledore." Harry explained "As far as I can guess Dumbledore and Grindlewald shared an obsession for the Hallows, an obsession which Dumbledore has continued. If he thinks the Stone will be within his reach he will move to obtain it. If I tell him in such a way that he can easily guess where it is but also suspects that it will be moved soon he will throw caution to the wind and try to take it."

After that Harry and Hermione began reading through the notes they had been given and started to organize them into a study schedule. Hermione found one parchment that she set aside from all the others without showing Harry, she would need to talk to Harry about what the parchment talked about soon, but it could wait until they had gone through the rest of the notes.

Minerva McGonagall would never admit to having favorite students, such things were highly unprofessional after all, but if she had to choose she would definitely have placed Harry Potter and Hermione Granger, Hermione Potter she reminded herself, on the list. She was extremely glad that the two of them were together now, even if they had not intended to get married, perhaps now Harry's work habits would stabilize. Minerva had noticed a strange pattern over the last three years, there had been multiple times when Harry and Hermione had seemed to be closer than usual, and if she didn't know better she would have sworn they were in a relationship, and during these times Harry's classwork and essays would improve significantly. It wasn't that he was receiving help, the thought process that was demonstrated was the same in all his essays, but the essays were better thought out and less rushed. Then just as suddenly as the change had happened a few weeks later it would disappear.

Minerva had finished speaking to Dumbledore about what had happened earlier and had been concerned by the look on Dumbledore's face when he learned of Harry and Hermione's accidental marriage, one could almost see the gears turning in Albus's head as he tried to adjust whatever plans he had regarding the young Mr. Potter. Dumbledore had definitively refused to allow the Potters' request for private quarters, spouting some nonsense about Harry needing to stay in his dorm in order to repair his friendship with Ronald Weasley. Minerva then informed him that they had placed the request using Harry's position as a Triwizard Champion and Dumbledore had no choice but to concede.

She had then spoken to Bathsheba Babbling and Septima Vector about Harry joining their classes. Both teachers had been hesitant, but quickly changed their tune when informed that Harry had already started learning the subjects from Hermione. Both agreed that Harry could sit the classes for the remainder of term, and if he passed a cumulative exam before the Christmas holidays he would be welcome to continue the class. Minerva wrote up a new schedule for Harry and wrote him a note explaining the conditions on which he could change classes and then had a house elf deliver them before showing the Potters to their new quarters.


	3. Chapter 3

**Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter or any related characters or elements.**

**A/N: I really appreciate all the positive responses I've been getting for this story, I just wish FFN hadn't changed how they handled anonymous reviews because now I have to take the time to read through the replies left by assholes who don't want their review to be associated with them. If you don't like the story don't read, and if you don't intend continue reading I don't need to hear your bitching. Sorry about the rant.**

Harry Potter and Death's Bargain

Chapter 3

Harry eagerly opened the door to the private quarters that Hermione and he had been assigned. They had spent nearly an hour just looking through the different parchments before they had been found by a house elf named Roddy who had given them a note from Professor McGonagall. The note informed them that Harry would be allowed into the Arithmancy and Ancient Runes and also provided directions to their private quarters on the fourth floor. They asked Roddy to have lunch delivered to their quarters before they quickly made their way to their new home.

On impulse Harry picked Hermione up and carried her through the door, drawing an amused giggle from Hermione. On the other side of the door was a small sitting room/study. There was a fireplace on one wall with a couple of comfortable looking chairs and a couch. On the opposite wall was a pair of ornate desks with a large bookcase between them. The third wall, which was directly across from the entrance, had two doors. Both of their trunks were sitting directly between the two doors. Harry set Hermione down and they walked over to the door on the left, inside was a bedroom with a king size bed and a large window looking out over the grounds. Wondering where the other door lead they opened it to find another bedroom, this one with a single bed and a much smaller window.

"I don't know if McGonagall was being optimistic or just didn't want to presume." Harry mused as he moved both his and Hermione's trunks into the first bedroom.

"Perhaps it was a little bit of both." Hermione suggested

There hadn't even needed to be a discussion about sleeping arrangements, after all they had been sharing a bed on and off since second year. It had started innocently enough when Harry had come down to the common room to find Hermione sleeping on a chair, being unable to wake her and unwilling to let his friend spend the night in a chair Harry had carried her up to the boys dorm. Over the years they had often shared a bed whether they were together or not, Harry had commonly found that it was the only way to ensure that Hermione quit studying long enough to get a good night's sleep. Now that they wouldn't need to be sneaking around neither had any intention of ever sleeping alone again.

"So, what do you think we should work on first?" Harry asked as they ate lunch sitting on their bed.

"Well, it won't be the first thing we can do, but there is something we need to talk about before everything else. Even though your scar isn't a horcrux, it is tainted by some kind of dark magic, and there's no knowing what kind of long term effects it could have on your health. It's even possible that it has been effecting your decisions, making you more impulsive." Hermione said, pulling out the parchment she had set aside earlier.

"I assume that you have something there about how to deal with it." Harry said gesturing to the parchment Hermione was holding in her hands.

"Well yes, it's a purification ritual. It breaks down any magic that has a lasting effect on anyone involved in the ritual and then pours it into the magical cores of everyone involved. The thing is the ritual can only be performed on the night of a full moon in early spring... and both of us would need to be virgins." Hermione explained, hesitating before revealing the last requirement of the ritual.

"Okay." Harry said, quickly derailing Hermione's worries over his reaction "If we need to wait to do this ritual we need to wait. Besides we are a little young right now, even though right now it's only a few months earlier than our first time." Harry paused as he remembered the true aftermath of the Yule Ball, and if the look in Hermione's eyes was any indication she was currently reminiscing about the same night. "We both agreed that even though we didn't regret it we were still to young."

Hermione sighed in relief "I'm glad you're so understanding, if you were any other teenage boy, it would be almost impossible to convince you to wait, though if you were any other teenage boy I probably wouldn't have married you." Hermione said with a smile. "Even if we didn't have to wait til spring I would still have insisted that we wait until after we told my parents that we're married."

"When did you plan on doing that? It doesn't seem like the kind of thing you can just put in a letter."

"Well," Hermione started with a pleading look in her eyes "I was hoping we could do it tomorrow. It's a Sunday so no one will be looking for us, and we could use your cloak to sneak out to Hogsmeade and apparate to my house. Maybe have lunch with my parents before coming back."

"Of course we can go tomorrow. I know how much you miss them, and I half expected you to insist we go over there for dinner tonight." Harry said pulling Hermione into a comforting hug.

"Good, while we're there I can grab some more books so we can fill up our bookshelf. Now back to business," Hermione quickly switched to a more business-like tone "The first thing we should probably work on is the animagus transformation. This is a recipe for a potion which apparently short-cuts the entire process. It's pretty complicated the first step is brewing six different potions which form the base of the final potion. Unfortunately each of the potions will need two cauldrons if we both want to be able to use this, which means that with only our two cauldrons it will take about a month to finish."

"What if we had as many cauldrons as we needed?" Harry asked.

"Ten days, eleven at the most, but we would need at least eight cauldrons, and cauldrons aren't cheap." Hermione said after running through the information in her head.

"I know where we can get as many cauldrons as we need, for free, and we need to go there anyways." Harry said with a grin. "Though we may need to fix them up a bit before we use them. Do we have all the ingredients for the potions?"

"Yeah, if we can get enough cauldrons we'll be able to start immediately, but where are we getting the cauldrons?"

"One thing that the Room of Requirements has always been used for is hiding stolen, damaged, or illegal things, whether it's a potions book with dark curses written in the margins or a horcrux. Among other things there are a whole bunch of... _lightly used_ caldrons in there. We probably just need to clean them up a little and they'll be good as new." Harry explained as he stood up and offered Hermione a hand up.

When Harry opened the door to the Room Hermione was surprised by the sheer mass of things that had been squirreled away there over the years. "Hermione, you start looking through the cauldrons while I look for the horcrux." Harry said, pointing out a large pile of cauldrons in varying states of disrepair.

"Why on earth would Voldemort hide a horcrux here?" Hermione asked as she dislodged a cauldron that looked almost brand new, until she looked inside to see a strange neon green residue coating the inside of the cauldron.

"My best guess is that when he found this place he had never heard of anything like it, so in his infinite arrogance he decided that he must be the only person who had ever found it, therefore making it the best place in Hogwarts to hide his horcrux." Harry mused as he conjured a wooden box to hold the horcrux.

"Do you really think he's that arrogant Harry? I mean it would take some serious mental gymnastics to convince yourself that no one else has ever found this room before, I mean just the sheer volume of stuff in here would suggest otherwise."

"Have you ever heard the guy talk? I don't think I've ever heard him go two sentences without referring to himself as the most powerful wizard to ever live or the greatest dark lord in history. He isn't even in the top five in the world today when it comes to raw power, and Grindlewald definitely has him beat for greatest dark lord of the twentieth century." Harry had levitated Ravenclaw's diadem into the box and was now helping Hermione with the cauldrons.

"How do you figure that Harry? Everything I've read about Grindlewald says that he was pretty nasty, but every author says that Voldemort was worse."

"These are the same people who wrote that I was an attention seeking maniac one day and the lone voice of reason the next. Voldemort is worse because he's fresh and new, in a few decades when historians start to write objective analysis of the events of this century they'll all probably agree that Grindlewald was the more serious threat. I mean Grindlewald started gathering power and followers in the twenties, he uses his influence and magic to manipulate muggle politics to create tension, then he manipulates the German economy to the point of collapse to get his Nazi puppets elected and starts a war that claims millions of lives just to get plenty of dead bodies to create an unending army of inferi to try to conquer Europe. By the time Dumbledore decides to get involved every magical government in continental Europe is on the verge of collapse or has already surrendered, and Grindlewald is beginning a push into Asia. Grindlewald held power for two decades, Voldemort was nowhere close to that. He starts up in the late sixties and for most of a decade he's just the leader of a glamorized band of petty thugs killing and torturing muggles for fun, no one even cared until '77 when he killed Edgar Bones and then he only lasted four years until he lost. All told Voldemort and the death eaters never even broke a thousand for the body count."

Hermione was impressed by Harry's knowledge of History "Where did you learn all that? Even with all the memories we both lost I don't remember you ever reading that much history."

"When you were petrified in second year I spent a lot of time reading about modern history, hoping to find something about the first time the Chamber of Secrets had been opened. When I realized there was nothing there I started looking into the other things I read about, I even compiled all my notes so you could read them when you woke up, but after I killed the basilisk Dumbledore decided that I couldn't be allowed to keep thinking the way I was about history and other things so he obliviated me, no idea what he did with my notes." Harry finished sadly, the notes had actually been pretty good, and would easily have been enough to write up a thesis paper as an alternative to taking his OWLs in History of Magic.

By this time they had found more than enough caldrons, and with a few quick spells Hermione had them all cleaned up, fixed up, and shrunk down. When they got back to their rooms Hermione shrunk all the furniture in the spare bedroom and setup all the cauldrons they would need.

"So, how exactly does this whole thing work?" Harry asked as Hermione set the last potion to simmering.

"Well we start by making the six component potions, along with a few doses of blood replenishing and muscle relaxing potions. Then when all of them are done we each drink the first three potions, let them work their way through our bodies before collecting a pint of our blood, hence the blood replenishing potion. Then we drink the fourth potion to give it three days to loosen our bodies up to allow the transformation while we mix the two remaining potions with our blood and a few other ingredients. Then when the potions have finished mixing we drink them and it apparently forces us through the entire animagus process inn a little under an hour. It's apparently quite painful as the last instruction before drinking the potion is to silence the room. Apparently it also leaves you quite sore, which is why you make the muscle relaxers." Hermione explained as she reread the directions

"So is this going to be like the polijuice where you had to sneak off at the weirdest times to do something to the potion?"

"Nope most of these just need to simmer for a set amount of time, and the more complicated ones only take a day to do. The initial potions should take a week, so we'll be able to take the final potion after dinner next Wednesday."

"Speaking of dinner, it's getting kind of late, you want to head down to the Great Hall or ask Roddy to bring something up?" Harry asked when he finally looked at his watch.

Hermione thought about their options before she sighed in resignation "We might as well head down and face everyone now, it will only get worse if we stay hidden away."

As Harry and Hermione entered the Great Hall they were truly amazed by the efficiency of the Hogwarts gossips. Somehow in the ten hours since they had gotten married the entire school seemed to have learned about it, which was even more impressive since the only person they had talked to about it was Professor McGonagall, and it was extremely unlikely she would have told any of the students. When everyone saw Harry and Hermione walk into the Hall a silence swept across the hall as everyone tried to gauge what their response should be. Seeing that Harry and Hermione were holding hands and were apparently quite happy caused a number of different reactions that could generally be quantified by the trim color of the robes a person was wearing. Those with green trim were disappointed that they could not torment the two Gryfindors about the results of their foolishness, those with blue trim looked on with their usual studied indifference and filed this new information away for future reference, those with yellow trim were conflicted, on one hand they were still upset that Harry Potter had stolen Cedric's glory the night before, but on the other hand it was not in the nature of a Hufflepuff to be vindictive and on any other day they would have been happy for the Gryfindor couple. The people with red trim, for the most part were happy for their housemates, though more than a few females, and one or two males were disappointed that the Boy-Who-Lived was well and truly off the market. Most of Gryfindor house had been expecting Harry and Hermione to officially become a couple since half-way through their first year and more than a few had seen hints that they were more than friends over the years, but when they would go back to the way they normally were a few days later everyone assumed that they had mutually decided that they weren't ready for a romantic relationship yet. None suspected that their on again off again relationship was the result of a meddling old man with an unhealthy obsession with a young boy.

When Harry and Hermione sat down at the Gryfindor table many of their housemates came over to congratulate them. When Lavender Brown and Parvati Patil came over Hermione was dreading what was sure to be a highly embarrassing and extremely personal conversation, however shortly after the required niceties were exchanged before Lavender could begin her in-depth interrogation Hermione was rescued by Harry's female teammates coming to congratulate them.

As Alicia was jokingly explaining to Hermione that they expected her to keep Harry out of trouble, so as to avoid any injuries that could potentially interfere with quidditch next year, they were approached by one of the people they were hoping to avoid for at least a couple of days.

"POTTER!" Ron yelled as he came stomping toward them. Harry could tell from the particular shade of red that adorned Ron's face that he had spent most of the day building up a head of steam, in fact to have gotten this mad Ron would have to have been one of the first to find out. In that moment Harry finally connected the dots, and while he snapped off a quick silencing charm at Ron he looked at Hermione, the look of understanding and anger in her eyes immediately told him she had come to the same conclusion. They both looked up at the staff table and the twinkle in Dumbledore's eyes as he looked on with barely disguised glee confirmed all their suspicions.

When McGonagall had informed the headmaster of Harry and Hermione's new status his plans had taken a serious blow, up until that point he had been able to remove any memory of their relationship using a couple of highly questionable loopholes in the Hogwarts rules. If they had discovered his actions he would lose their trust, but he would be protected from any legal action. Now though, it would be highly illegal to remove the memory of their marriage from them, and it wouldn't do any good as there would be documentation of their marriage and every official document would now list them as Harry and Hermione Potter. So in a fit of childish rage Dumbledore had decided to go for a little bit of petty revenge. He had informed Ronald that there would now be no way for him to get Granger as she was now married, knowing that the first time Ronald came into contact with the Potters he would make a very loud and very public scene which would quickly reveal the Potters' marriage despite any efforts they might have taken to conceal it. After Ronald had left his office he realized that the fact that they had requested private quarters meant that they probably had no intention of keeping it a secret from anyone, with the possible exception of the former Miss Granger's parents, and as they were muggles they wouldn't find out about it through the Hogwarts parents grapevine. At least he could hope that the confrontation would be loud enough to warrant intervention from a teacher, or perhaps take place near Snape who would take any opportunity to punish Potter. He also hadn't accounted for the fact that Ron in a fury was not a quiet thing and that within twenty minutes of leaving the headmaster's office he had already started muttering about Harry and Hermione getting married. When he muttered these recriminations he was sitting in the Gryfindor common room, only ten feet away from Lavender Brown, the Gossip Queen of Gryfindor. Within ten minutes every girl in Gryfindor Tower knew and they quick extrapolated the most likely scenario, which happened to be extremely close to the cover story that Harry and Hermione had created.

As Hermione had learned in the Department of Mysteries when she had silenced Dolohov in a misguided attempt to keep him from casting any spells, silencing spells do not actually prevent a person from speaking, they just create a thin bubble around their head that stops sound from going out. As a result Ron was not aware that he was the only person who could hear his rage fueled rant in the middle of the great hall, however from watching his lips Harry was able to make out a few phrases, like 'my girl', 'selfish bastard', and 'any witch in Hogwarts' before he turned his rage towards Hermione. At this point all the discernible phrases were variations on a theme, this theme was calling into question Hermione's virtue and implied strongly that she had used her 'loose muggle ways' to ensnare Harry in order to get her hands on his money. Harry was quite certain that Ron believed everything he said, he just couldn't determine whether Ron was pissed because someone had stolen the Weasleys' plan or if he was just an idiot who didn't realize that he had been actively involved in a plan to do exactly the same thing.

Growing tired of Ron's silent shouting Harry and Hermione returned to their meal. After a couple of minutes there was the sound of scuffle and Harry turned to see Katie with Ron's wand in one hand while her other hand had Ron's arm twisted up behind his back. Apparently Ron had finally realized that they weren't listening to his yelling and had decided to hex them in the back.

"Thanks Katie." Harry said, standing up to look Ron directly in the eyes.

"No problem Harry." Katie replied, not letting go of Ron's arm, though she did relieve some of the pressure.

Harry stared directly into Ron's eyes before saying, in a voice so cold that several people sitting near by checked their drinks to see if they had frozen, "Ronald Weasley, the insults you have made against myself and my wife give me every right to challenge you to a duel of honor, a duel that we both know you would not survive. It is only in recognition of our friendship of the last three years that I have not done so, that friendship is now over, and if you ever insult Hermione again I will not show such restraint. Do we have an understanding?"

Ron nodded quickly before he turned and ran out of the Hall, leaving his wand and his appetite behind. Harry was surprised that none of the teachers had intervened, though now that he thought about it, after Ron's initial shout, the confrontation had been rather quiet and hexes had not actually been exchanged, and while Snape would probably have loved to punish Harry for casting a silencing charm on Ron without any Slytherins involved and plenty of other teachers present he had no authority, which McGonagall would gladly point out to him.

Harry and Hermione finished dinner quickly after Ron left. Once they were done they made their way back to their quarters where Hermione made a quick check of all the potions brewing in the spare room.

Having assured herself that the potions were exactly as they Hermione's mind moved onto other things, Harry's home life had been bothering her for years, and she had previously spent hours going through the library looking for any legal basis for getting Harry away from the Dursleys. Unfortunately those hours had turned up very little, without someone with a stronger claim to custody coming forward, which eliminated everyone but Sirius Black, Harry could not be removed from the Dursley home. However if Hermione remembered correctly, and she usually did, there had been a mention of what, at the time, seemed a little piece of legal trivia, but now could provide an escape for Harry.

While Hermione was busy thinking Harry was doing the next few weeks of homework from memory, taking only enough time to make it look neat. Harry had just finished a Transfiguration essay that was going to be assigned two weeks from Thursday when he looked up to see Hermione caught in an internal debate with herself.

"What's up?" Harry asked with a note of concern.

"Oh, there's something I wanted to look up in a book before we go see my parents tomorrow, but I need to add an ingredient to one of the potions in an hour, and the library will be closing a few minutes after that. I'm pretty sure I know which book it's in, but if I'm wrong it might take too long to find the right one." Hermione said with a small sigh.

"Okay," Harry said with a chuckle of relief "just tell me what to do, and I'll handle the potion while you run to the library."

"Thanks Harry." Hermione said giving him a kiss on the cheek before grabbing her book bag. "When the timer goes off add the fluxxweed from the blue bowls to cauldrons three and four, then stir them both three times counter-clockwise. The stirring spoons are charmed to act together so you only need to stir one."

By the time Hermione returned Harry had finished all his homework for the month of November, with the obvious exceptions of Arithmancy and Ancient Runes, and added the fluxxweed. Once Hermione had returned Harry and Hermione retired to their new bedroom. They would be up early tomorrow, and it was going another long day, so after only a few minutes they were both fast asleep.

**A/N: Sorry this took so long to get out, life got complicated, then I got distracted, then I got busy and it took me the better part of a month to get this down. I hope you all enjoy, and hopefully you won't have to wait as long for the next chapter.**


	4. Chapter 4

**Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter, and my magic 8-ball keeps telling me that probably won't change any time in the near future. (For those needing clarification, while I own _a_ magic 8-ball the concept of the magic 8-ball also belongs to someone else.)**

Harry Potter and Death's Bargain

Chapter 4

Ginevra Molly Weasley was in a sour mood. It had all started _her _Harry's name had come out of that stupid goblet. Dumbledore had promised her that this year would be the year she could finally have him, that arrangements would be made to keep that worthless bitch Granger away from him and she could get closer to him without _her _interference. Now there was no way Granger was going to leave Harry alone, after all who could resist spending time with a Tri-Wizard Champion, and Harry would always turn to Granger for help. What was worse was her stupid brother couldn't keep his damn mouth shut, he had to go and accuse Harry of entering himself. Then around lunch the next day the silliest rumors start to make their way through Hogwarts, somehow people were foolishly believing that her Harry had married Granger. While it wasn't unheard of for muggleborns to accidentally marry each other, that could never happen to Harry, after all he was a proper wizard, unlike that uppity bookworm.

Ginny was convinced this was just Lavender blowing things out of proportions, Harry and Hermione had probably just been seen holding hands together and the story just snowballed. And while Harry may have been seduced by that bucktoothed know-it-all, Ginny would forgive him for it once the headmaster had fixed things again. And since Dumbledore was going to make sure neither of them would remember this in a few days she might as well take the opportunity to give that bitch a piece of her mind.

So Ginny had been waiting for Hermione to return to the common room, she had missed dinner waiting, and she had waited all night, and when Hermione hadn't returned by midnight she had taken a few hours to sleep before returning to her post, she wasn't going to let Granger slip past her.

While Ginny was waiting in Gryfindor Tower her intended prey was sleeping peacefully in the arms of her new husband three floors below. Harry and Hermione woke early, but still later than Ginny, and decided to get an early breakfast before going to Oxford to talk with Hermione's parents.

There was the usual early morning group in the Great Hall, a handful of early risers from each house and more than a few Ravenclaws who wanted to get some breakfast before heading to the library as soon as it opened at 8 o'clock. Harry and Hermione had been irregular members of this group through all their years at Hogwarts, Harry had developed a habit of waking early while living at the Dursleys' and had never broken it, while Hermione enjoyed the more serene atmosphere the early morning gave the Great Hall. The irregularity of their membership was due in no small part to the fact that Hermione would always wait for Harry to head down for breakfast, and during the periods immediately after Dumbledore had rearranged their memories Harry had a strong urge to wait until closer to the normal breakfast time so he could make sure Ron got up in time, these urges would fade over the next few weeks and Harry would soon find himself and Hermione back in the habit o getting breakfast as soon as it was available to avoid the rush. At 7:15 there was the normal early delivery from the post owls, the school owls had been trained to deliver mail only at 7:15, 8:15, and on weekends at 9:15, and the personal owls followed these schedules to help maintain the privacy of their owners.

Harry and Hermione had been slightly dreading the possibility that they would receive some kind of response to their marriage, and were pleasantly surprised when the only mail they received was from a Ministry owl bearing an official copy of their marriage certificate along with some other legal forms which Hermione scanned through quickly before tucking them in her bag to deal with them later.

They were quite certain that the only reason they had not received any correspondence concerning their marriage, outside of the official recognition, was that everyone inside the castle had the decency to await confirmation before informing people outside of the castle, though this may have been more a response to the fear of looking like a complete fool if the rumors had proven false rather than a respect for privacy. As a result the earliest an owl could have gone out was the previous night after dinner, which would mean that, unless someone had sent one to a parent that lived within a hundred miles, it most likely would be arriving at its destination at that very moment, since owls were smart enough not to deliver mail in the middle of the night.

Harry and Hermione fully expected their marriage to be at least mentioned in the _Daily Prophet_ and could only hope that it was at the very least tastefully done, though they both mentally resigned themselves to the fact that the _Prophet_ was not known for being tasteful on a good day, and would sooner close its doors than ignore a potential scandal, whether real or imagined. They need not have worried though as at that very moment in a dingy little basement office at the _Daily Prophet_ a middle aged witch by the name of Erin Templeton was receiving a letter from her contact at the Ministry about the marriage of Harry Potter. Ms. Templeton had been the _Prophet_'s marriage correspondent for over forty years, ever since she had taken the job right out of Hogwarts. She had been given the job because, while she was an excellent writer and journalist, she was far too polite to make a career of journalism in the opinion of the editor at the time, and their current marriage correspondent was on the verge of retirement. She had accepted the job because she genuinely loved weddings and figured the job would be an excellent way to wrangle an invitation to any wedding in the country, and it was. Everyone had been astonished when her first published piece had been met with a positive response despite the fact that she had totally ignored the fact that six months before the wedding the groom had been regularly seen in the company of the bride's older sister.

While Harry and Hermione were sneaking out of the castle through a secret passageway Erin Templeton was marching into the editor's office, this story could be the biggest one of her career, and she would not let the editor hand it over to that Skeeter bint. Skeeter would make this out to be some sort of scandal, and would completely ruin what should be a happy memory for Mr. Potter and his new wife, besides it was in her contract that she would cover any and all stories related to weddings or marriage and she would be glad to remind the editor of that, even if she had to contact a solicitor to sue the _Prophet_ to the point where the _Quibbler _would look like a major newspaper by comparison.

Jean Granger was sitting in her kitchen enjoying her morning cup of coffee, she had picked up the habit in University and had never been able to give it up, apparently her daughter had picked it up as well for during the summer more often than not the two of them would enjoy a morning cup together. Her thoughts turning to Hermione Jean looked at the clock, it was the morning of November Second and any minute a beautiful snowy owl would be flying through the window with a letter for her from Hermione. After all the night before last had been Halloween and if life held true to form something had happened, and it would have something to do with the owner of the aforementioned snowy owl, Harry Potter.

For the past three years every letter home had contained at least a paragraph had been all about Harry Potter. From that very first letter Jean could tell that her little girl was in love with Harry and every letter after that only further confirmed that. During the summer Harry would be a major topic of conversation, constantly wondering how Harry was coping with being home. These summer conversations told Jean a lot about Harry, while leaving her with far more questions. That first summer when none of Hermione's letters received replies her first reaction had been fear, not fear that her friend didn't want to write to her, but fear that his relatives wouldn't let him write to her. Hermione had refused to explain the basis of her fears, saying that she wouldn't betray Harry's trust.

Then just a couple of months ago Hermione had received an invitation to an international sporting event, and she had immediately agreed to go, not because she was all that interested in the sport but because she would get to see Harry a couple weeks sooner. As Jean had told her daughter goodbye she had joked that every time she got a letter she half expected it to inform her that Hermione had decided to marry her best friend, and Hermione had assured her mother that she would deliver that news in person.

While she was thinking about her daughter and her best friend she was joined in the kitchen by her husband David. As David was pouring himself a cup of coffee there was a knock at the front door that pulled Jean from her thoughts.

"I've got it." said Jean, setting her cup of coffee on the kitchen counter and heading for the door. When Jean opened the door she was surprised to find the subjects of her earlier thoughts standing on the doorstep. "Hermione, what are you doing here?" She asked her daughter as she pulled her into a hug.

Jean was concerned when Hermione didn't return the hug with her usual enthusiasm, until she pulled back and saw that Hermione was holding Harry's hand and therefore had only one arm free to return the hug. Jean took a quick moment to examine Harry as a small smile crept its way across her face, Harry had changed only a little in the two years since she had seen him that day in Diagon Alley. He was a little taller, though just as skinny. His hair looked as if it hadn't moved at all, it was just as untidy as it apparently always was. However some of the timidity had gone, and Jean could tell it was due in large part to the girl holding his hand. Clearly the relationship between these two had changed, and she had been expecting this for two years now. Of course she hadn't expected Hermione to come down from Scotland for a visit, but as long as it wasn't bad news, and from the looks on their faces it wasn't, then she wasn't going to complain.

"Hi mum, is dad up yet? We need to tell you something." Hermione informed her mother giving Harry's hand a subtle squeeze that was nonetheless seen by her mother.

"Of course dear, come inside its rather chilly out there." Jean replied ushering the two teenagers into the house and closing the door. Deciding to have a little fun teasing her daughter she asked "So, when's the wedding?"

Jean expected the blushing from both teens, even the averted gazes didn't surprise her, but what she had definitely not expected was Hermione's reply.

Looking at her shoe's Hermione timidly responded "Um, yesterday." Jean had absolutely no idea how to respond to that and it showed on her face. On any other occasion Hermione would have found her mother's dumbstruck expression very humorous, but this was already a somewhat delicate situation. "Perhaps you should go get dad so we can explain."

Jean nodded her head trying to get her brain back in gear "Why don't you wait in the den while I go get him." she finally suggested.

While Jean returned to the kitchen Hermione showed Harry into the den where they sat down on the couch, still holding hands though not quite as close to each other as they normally would be. They had spent some time the day before discussing how best to handle informing Hermione's parents of their marriage. Hermione had been of the opinion, and Harry agreed on principle, that the most important part would be telling them that it had been completely accidental while explaining that it could not be undone, but stressing that neither of them was unhappy with the development. This plan would placate Hermione's father long enough for her mother to explain to him that this was not a bad thing. Hermione would have preferred to tell her parents the whole store, but had agreed that it would not be safe to give them much more than their current cover story since they had absolutely no way to defend their minds.

At this point they were joined in the den by Hermione's parents. They both took a seat across from the couch, David examined his daughter and the boy she had brought home. He wasn't entirely sure how to feel about this development, on one hand Hermione had always been shy and before she had gone off to Hogwarts she never really had any friends and he had always feared she would never come out of her shell enough to have a real relationship, on the other hand she was his little girl and he was quite certain that he was supposed to be opposed to her ever dating. However as his wife had been explaining to him for the past year if Hermione had to date one of her friends it was better that it be the boy who was currently seated next to her rather than the insensitive ginger one. He was a little confused as to why they were here when they should be up in Scotland, but hopefully they would explain that soon.

"Hi dad," Hermione started "I want to start by saying that, apparently, Hogwarts has a pretty serious hole in their curriculum for muggleborn students. You see yesterday, because of certain things that no one ever bothered to explain to Harry or I, we kind of... accidentally... got married."

"Accidentally?" asked Jean. "Married?" asked David. These two questions were asked simultaneously with the same tone of surprise.

"Yes, you see yesterday Harry and I were taking a walk because Ron was being a git, and I promised Harry that I would always be there for him and then he promised that he would always be there for me." Hermione explained "What nobody ever bothered to tell us is that once you turn fourteen any promise made to another in good faith is enforced by your magic. Since Harry and I both promised each other that we would never abandon each other our magic sealed the promise in the spirit it was intended, which apparently means we're now married."

"Well, can't you get divorced or something?" David asked with a hint of desperation.

"No, we can't. There is no divorce in the magical world, the best a couple could do is separate, but they would still be legally married. And we couldn't do that because in this case it's the law simply recognizing what our magic has done. If we separated there would be dire consequences, at first we would have trouble sleeping, then we would have trouble controlling our magic we would have a constant urge to find each other that would prevent us from focusing on anything for more than a few minutes, eventually it would drive us both insane." Hermione tried to impress upon her parents how bad it would be if they tried anything drastic.

"Are you two okay with this?" Jean asked "The last I heard you two were just friends, and now your married."

"Of course we're okay mum, this couldn't have happened if we didn't love each other." Hermione reassured her mother before shooting Harry a questioning glance, Harry's response was to shrug his shoulder's, knowing exactly what she was asking and having not enough information to make a judgment he left the decision to her. "And we've never really been 'just friends'. You see magic can do some strange things and when Harry kissed me yesterday it unlocked a whole bunch of memories that had been hidden from us, memories of us being together. It turns out we were friends for less than three hours before we decided to be more than that. We were together for two weeks before someone decided to interfere and made us forget, and that wasn't the only time it happened."

"Who did it?" David practically growled, someone had done something to his little girl and he was going to do something about it.

It was Harry's turn to silently ask Hermione's permission to disclose a piece of information, when she nodded her agreement Harry said in a flat tone "Dumbledore."

"Wait isn't he your headmaster?" Jean asked. Both the teens nodded sadly "Isn't there something you can do about it, he must have broken some kind of law."

"Unfortunately no, if he had even the thinnest excuse saying that what he did was for student safety he has pretty much unlimited power, as long as he doesn't cause permanent physical harm to a student." Hermione said bitterly "He can't do it again though because we're married. If he tried to split us up we could charge him with line theft and he would spend the rest of his life in Azkaban."

"Well you aren't going back to that school." David said.

"We have to." Hermione said "If we don't Harry could lose his magic because of this stupid tournament he's being forced to compete in. And we can't just drop out of school so we would have to wait until next year to change schools anyways." As she was saying this her watch started beeping "Harry, I have a few more things I need to talk to my parents about, but two of the potions need to be taken off the fire in twenty minutes."

"Alright, anything you want me to take back with me?" Harry asked as he took hi invisibility cloak and an empty book bag out of Hermione's bag.

"Yeah, my room's just upstairs to the left, take any of the books off the bottom shelf. When the timer goes off take cauldrons five and six off the fire, pour them into jars E and F, and then clean them out before you come back." Hermione said before giving Harry a quick kiss and sending him off to complete his task.

"What was that about?" Jean asked her daughter as Harry left the room.

"Oh, we're working on an extracurricular project that's kind of time sensitive. Also there were a few topics I need to discuss with you that will be easier to get through if Harry isn't in the room." Hermione explained as she listened for the distinctive crack of Harry apparating away. Once she was sure he had gone back to Hogwarts she reached into her bag and pulled out the bundle of forms they had received from the Ministry. Looking through them she found the form she was looking for and laid it out on the coffee table. "I need to talk to you both about Harry's relatives. They aren't good people, and the way they treat Harry is absolutely deplorable, so I need you both to sign this form to take guardianship of Harry."

"If it's that bad why hasn't something been done before now?" Jean asked moving to sit next to her daughter.

"Because in the magical world there are no laws against child abuse." Hermione said her voice hollow as tears filled her eyes "So as long as they don't stop him from going to Hogwarts no one in the magical world is going to do anything, and if we tried to do something in the muggle courts someone would just come in and make the case disappear."

"So what's different now?" Jean asked pulling Hermione into a hug.

"Now we're married." Hermione said her voice trembling as she wiped away the few tears she had been unable to stop. "When two minors get married one of the families has to take primary custody. Since they are only his aunt and uncle you have a stronger claim, so as long as you fill out that form there is nothing anyone could do about you taking custody of Harry. You would be his legal guardian until I turn seventeen at which point I would be his legal guardian until his birthday."

"Okay dear, just show us where to sign." Jean said softly.

Hermione quickly showed her parents where they needed to sign, but when it was her father's turn to sign the forms he hesitated and was about to say something when Hermione cut him off "Dad if you're thinking about bringing up those statistics about abused children, don't bother. I've read all the literature and Harry isn't going end up like that."

"Pumpkin..."

"No dad, the first rule when dealing with statistics in psychology is that you never make assumptions about an individuals future behavior based on the statistics. Besides abused children become abusers because they grow up thinking that their home life is normal and they base their own behavior around that, Harry saw how his aunt and uncle treated his cousin so he always knew the way he was treated was anything but normal. Harry hates his relatives and would never willingly act like them." Hermione said her tone indicating that there was no room for discussion.

David just nodded and signed where he was told.

Harry returned a few minutes later, as all the important business had been completed for the day Harry and Hermione took some time to go through all of Hermione's books to decide which ones to take back with them. While they were in her room Hermione informed Harry of what had been discussed during his brief trip back to Hogwarts. The look in his eyes when she told him he would never have to go back to the Dursleys' nearly broke her heart. After all his years at the Dursleys' it surprised him when someone did something for him, he understood now why Hermione would go out of her way to help him, but he still thought of her as a special case.

While Harry and Hermione were packing up books the Grangers were ordering take-out for lunch. They called the young couple down to the kitchen when the food arrived and they all had a pleasant lunch of Chinese food. The conversation over lunch was pleasant, the Grangers taking the chance to get to know there new son-in-law better. The conversation avoided the more sensitive subjects that they had learned from Hermione, but they still got a much better idea of who Harry Potter was during their conversation.

One topic of conversation that had the potential to cause an incident though was when Jean asked about their previous relationships. This would normally be a bad topic to discuss with your daughter and her new husband, but when all those previous relationships were with each other it is usually less of a problem. Unfortunately this turn in the conversation brought up the fact that Dumbledore had erased their memories on multiple occasions.

"Sixteen times? How could he have done that? Someone must have noticed something."

"They probably did, but the things they would have noticed wouldn't tell them anything definitive. Most of the times we got together it was shortly after Ron said or did something stupid, so when we were spending more time together most people probably just assumed we were still on the outs with Ron." Hermione explained

"Add to that the fact that we're both very private people and we tried to keep things to ourselves and it isn't all that surprising no one noticed. And if they did they probably just assumed that we agreed that we were too young for a romantic relationship and decided to give things some time." Harry added after a few moments thought

"Still, that only explains the students, not the teachers. Teachers are much more observant than most of the students. How did they not notice anything?" Jean countered

"Most of them probably noticed, but other than McGonagall they all probably thought it wasn't a serious issue if it wasn't mentioned at a staff meeting, and if they did they would have brought their concerns to McGonagall since she's head of Gryfindor." Hermione suggested.

"McGonagall probably noticed but Dumbledore could easily have charmed her so that she wouldn't make the connection between all those separate pieces of information." Harry continued.

After lunch they all went through the remaining paperwork from the Ministry, Hermione confirmed that she would be changing her name to Hermione Potter, Harry granted Hermione full access to all his accounts and properties (this was technically a Gringotts form, but the Ministry provided a copy for convenience), and they filled out a change of address form for Harry, officially making the Granger house his home address.

When they said goodbye to Hermione's parents both teens felt that the day had gone quite well, they had managed to inform Hermione's parents o their marriage without anyone saying something stupid. By revealing the fact that Dumbledore had removed chunks of their memories they had given Mr. Granger something to focus on other than the fact that his little girl was married at fifteen. And most importantly, in Hermione's mind, they had gotten Harry permanently away from the hell he had grown up in.

When they got back to Hogwarts they sent Hedwig off to the Ministry with all their parchmentwork. While Hedwig was delivering that Harry wrote a letter to Sirius informing him about the Tri-Wizard Tournament and his marriage to Hermione. He asked Sirius to inform them when he would be able to meet them as they had important information to tell him, and until they could speak privately to minimize his contact with Dumbledore.

Ginny Weasley had not had anywhere near as productive a day as Harry and Hermione. She had spent the entire day watching the stairs to the girls dormitories waiting for Hermione to come down, she had missed lunch, and she would go on to miss dinner. She would not get to sleep until well after midnight, and when she did she was starting to worry that perhaps the rumors were more true than she had originally thought.

**A/N: Hope you all enjoyed. I felt like I had to add the bit about McGonagall in this chapter, rereading chapter two she came off not quite the way I had intended. In my opinion McGonagall is one of the few adult characters in the books that is actually any good. Next Chapter we will hopefully get to the animagus potion and talking to Sirius, but I can't say for certain as the end of this chapter was where I had intended to end the previous chapter and they just sort of took on a life of their own.**


	5. Chapter 5

**P;lDisclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter and most likely never will, so stop asking.**

Harry Potter and Death's Bargain

Chapter 5:

Harry was surprised by the front page of the _Daily Prophet_ on Monday morning. The headline was indeed about his marriage to Hermione but rather than the usual scandal-mongering he had come to expect from the _Prophet_ it was instead a tasteful article presenting what few facts were available in the best possible light. It then went on to discuss what was known of Harry and Hermione's friendship of the past three years and wish them the best in their future together. They even had a decent picture of Harry and Hermione, it was one that had been taken during their second year, shortly after Hermione had gotten out of the Hospital Wing following the polijuice incident. It was one of the times they had gotten together in second year, in fact if Harry remembered correctly the picture had been taken just hours before Dumbledore had obliviated them. The picture showed the two of them walking hand in hand on the grounds, there was just enough snow to make for a scenic backdrop.

They received significantly more mail that morning than they had on Sunday, for ten straight minutes owls were dropping off envelopes for them. After a quick charm confirmed there were no harmful spells or substances contained in any of them they began opening a few of them. For the most part they were polite congratulations, though there were a few interesting letters mixed in. One letter suggested, in what the sender obviously thought was a tasteful manner, that if Harry ever decided that he was in need of a mistress or two that the sender had multiple daughters who would be interested in filling the position. After that letter they decided to just look for letters from people they knew.

As they were disposing of the last of their letters the Great Hall began filling up, and before they could finish the second round of owl post arrived. Many people received copies of the _Daily Prophet_, but Harry's eye was drawn to one specific owl. There amongst the see of brown feathers was one decrepit gray owl, Errol the Weasley family owl, and held in his talons was a bright red envelope. Molly Weasley had sent them a howler.

Harry had been expecting this since he came back and he had done his homework. A howler is actually a very simple enchantment, it takes a verbal message which can be imprinted by magic then plays that message. A time delay is activated when the letter is received and if the howler isn't opened the time delay causes an explosion which starts the message playing anyways. Because all howlers possess the same set of enchantments anyone who knows them well enough can change them in any of a number of ways. Unfortunately those on the receiving end are usually rather limited in what they can do with an incoming howler, after all what is the point of removing the time delay, or increasing the volume of a howler addressed to you? Howlers also had one last annoying enchantment on them, they were protected against redirection charms cast by the recipient. However a howler can only have one specific recipient and therein lies the weakness that Harry was about to exploit.

Pulling his wand Harry began muttering a string of spells under his breath subtly adjusting the howler coming his way. First he replaced the message stored on the howler, then he removed the time delay while increasing both the volume at which the message was played and the size and intensity of the explosion that would automatically be released when the howler arrived back in Molly's hands. He then cast a return to sender charm hoping that Molly had decided to address the howler to Hermione, after all it would be a good idea to send a howler to the boy-who-lived telling him how to live his life, people might think she was a nosy bitch, and they would be completely right.

Molly Weasley would be in for quite a surprise when Errol finally made his way back down to the Burrow. Thinking about it Harry was quite certain that Errol could not have made the flight from the Burrow in the time since the _Prophet_ article, which meant that Molly had sent a howler before she should have known about Harry and Hermione getting married. Before Harry could follow this train of thought he was interrupted by another obnoxious ginger.

"GRANGER, YOU BACK-STABBING BITCH!" Ginny shrieked as she saw the headline of the _Daily Prophet_. Now anyone in Hogwarts would tell you that no one in their right mind should mess with Hermione Granger, after all she probably knew more spells than Dumbledore, and more importantly could find painful and humiliating ways of using every single one of them. Unfortunately for Ginevra Weasley there were two things working against her.

For one thing she was most definitely not in her right mind, after all she had only gotten five hours sleep in the last two days and hadn't eaten a real meal since Saturday morning. As a result of this she immediately fired off the hex she would become infamous for over the next few years. As her bat bogey hex went flying at Hermione the second thing came into play, this was not Hermione Granger timid bookworm, this was Hermione Potter vanquisher of dark wizards. Where once her spell choice would have been humiliating it was now debilitating.

Hermione's wand shot up and in rapid succession fired off a reflective shield, a vanishing spell, a depilatory charm, and a full-body bind. The shield immediately caused Ginny's hex to rebound which resulted in slimy green bats crawling out of the redhead's nose to attack her face. The vanishing spell removed all the bones in her right arm causing her to drop her wand, which she had been about to use to get rid of the bats. The depilatory charm ripped all the hair from her head adding shrieks of agony to the screams of terror and the sound of slimy wings. Finally the body bind caused her body to snap straight as a board, she was then knocked over by the bats still relentlessly attacking her face.

Less than three seconds after Ginny had fired her only spell the now bald and bleeding witch was on the ground helpless to defend herself against the mucus bats she so gladly inflicted on others. At that moment there was only one student in the hall who both cared enough about Ginny and was stupid enough to potentially cross Hermione to actually do anything. Unfortunately Ron didn't know enough magic to properly undo any of the spells on his sister so he settled for trying to knock the bats away.

In the thirty-seven seconds it took for McGonagall to get over to the Gryfindor table and dispel the bats they had already torn dozens of bloody furrows in the young witch's face. The cuts were so many and so deep that, even with magic, they would take days to heal and some would probably scar.

"Mrs. Potter, while I understand you were defending yourself, was it really necessary to use all those spells on Miss Weasley?" McGonagall asked, her disapproval evident in her tone.

Hermione shrugged "I didn't expect to get her with all three."

"Very well," McGonagall said as she waved her wand removing the body bind from Ginny "Miss Weasley you will serve a week's detention for your unprovoked attack. Now get to the Hospital Wing to have your arm fixed."

The rest of the week passed fairly quietly, at Hogwarts at least. After Hermione's display at breakfast on Monday everyone was much more polite to Harry than they had been the first time through that week. While no one had really changed their opinion of how Harry ended up in the tournament they were at least bright enough to keep their mouths shut. Classes were easy for Harry and Hermione since they had already sat these lessons before. With all the homework already finished for the month Harry was able to focus on catching up in his new classes and by Thursday he was already able to keep up with everything discussed in the class.

On Wednesday afternoon Errol finally arrived back at the burrow. Molly was in the kitchen at the time preparing lunch and was quite confused that the howler she had sent out had been returned unopened. She didn't have time wonder how that had happened before it exploded. The force of the explosion threw her against a wall where she slammed into her special clock completely destroying it. The explosion also shattered every plate, bowl, and cup in the cupboards, most of the pots and pans were thrown against walls bending them all out of shape, every window in the entire house was broken by the blast, and just as Molly thought it was all over a voice boomed out of the tattered red envelope "FUCK YOU MOLLY WEASLEY!" The voice was so loud that it rattled windows down in the village. So it was that Arthur Weasley returned home for lunch to find the kitchen completely destroyed and his wife bleeding on the floor with two ruptured eardrums.

Sirius Black didn't know what to think about the letter he held in his hands, he had already read it and reread it and he still didn't know what to think. His godson was in the Tri-Wizard Tournament, Sirius had been expecting something like this. After all with Harry's luck it was pretty much guaranteed that if something dangerous was going on at Hogwarts he would be forced right into the middle of it. It wasn't even the request that he be wary of Dumbledore until they could talk that had him perplexed, after all Dumbledore was far from perfect and Harry had more reason than most to distrust authority figures. No, it was the last line of the letter that had thrown him for a loop. _P.S. I kinda got married to Hermione on Saturday, hope to see you soon_.

Sirius would have thought it was a joke, but it was so poorly executed that it really wasn't even worth the trouble of writing it. Then he thought it might have been a code of some sort, but nothing he did with the words made any more sense. Then he had seen the _Daily Prophet_ from Monday and he realized that Harry had in fact been completely serious. He would need to get to Hogsmead as quickly as possible, his godson was married, they would need to celebrate.

The animagus potion had all been brewed properly, so on Sunday Hermione cleaned out and shrank down all but two of their cauldrons before taking the potions out to Harry who had been sitting in the main room of their quarters. When Harry drank the first two potions he understood exactly why no one used this method of achieving the animagus transformation anymore, the first potion tasted like rotten cabbage and left a fishy aftertaste and the second tasted like battery acid and burned like fire-whiskey going down. An hour later Hermione took out a couple of large jars and a small knife, after cutting their palms and allowing their blood to fill the jars they used a simple healing charm to fix their hands and downed a blood replenishing potion. They then had to drink another potion, this one with a taste reminiscent of raw sewage. After that Hermione returned to the extra room where she set to work on finishing the potions.

When that was all finished they sat down to a private lunch, they had decided that they enjoyed having lunch away from the Great Hall and had decided to continue to have private lunches every weekend. Part of the reason they did this was so that people wouldn't be suspicious if they weren't seen on a weekend afternoon if they had business outside the castle. While they were enjoying their lunch a brown owl flew in through the open window and door of their bedroom dropped a letter on the table and exited through the same method it had entered.

The letter was from Sirius, it was short and simple; _In Hogsmead, we need to talk, Snuffles_. Harry immediately took out a scrap of parchment wrote _Moony's old stomping ground, tonight 9. _Just as he was about to stand up to go to the Owlry Hedwig swooped into the room and looked at him expectantly. Harry figured it would be safe enough for Hedwig to make this one delivery to Sirius and handed her the note. As Hedwig left the room there was a scratching sound at the main door and Hermione went to investigate.

"Crookshanks. Did they finally get rid of my old bed?" Hermione asked of her half-kneazle as he sauntered into the room, his annoyed meow a definite yes. Hermione had been informed by her former roommates that Crookshanks had maintained his residence in the girls dorms, taking the opportunity to claim her now vacated bed as his own.

Now that the annoying big-eared things had removed his bed from its rightful place Crookshanks the Mighty, Vanquisher of Small Rodents, had decided to seek out his human assistant to see if she had set about acquiring proper quarters for someone of his stature. Surveying the room he decided that it would suffice and immediately claimed the most comfortable looking chair as his new throne. Crookshanks noticed that his assistant had recently received a letter from the dog-man, Crookshanks liked the dog-man for the simple reason that he also hated the rat-man. Crookshanks hated the rat-man for the simple reason that the scoundrel had the audacity to go masquerading as lunch.

As nine o'clock approached Harry and Hermione made their way out to the Whompping Willow under Harry's invisibility cloak. They immobilized the Willow before sneaking down through the secret passage to the Shrieking Shack.

Checking his watch as he entered the shack Harry called out "Sirius, you there?"

"Hey Harry," Sirius said stepping through a door into the hallway before pulling his godson into a hug "Hermione, I understand congratulations are in order for the two of you."

"Hello Sirius" Hermione said with a smile.

"So, two questions," Sirius said stepping back to look at the teens "Why didn't I get an invitation to the wedding? I mean, I'm your godfather I think I warrant an invite." Sirius pouted.

"It kind of just happened Sirius, but I promise if I ever get married again I'll send you an invitation." Harry said earning him a smack on the arm from his wife.

"What was your other question Sirius?" Hermione asked with a hint of concern.

"Where's the redhead?"

"Well that's kind of a long story..." Harry gave Sirius a quick explanation of everything that had happened since the Goblet of Fire had shot out his name, avoiding any mention of time travel. He went on to explain how Dumbledore had removed their memories in the past. By the time he was done Sirius looked like he wanted to go straight up to the school and strangle Albus Dumbledore with his own beard.

Trying to distract himself Sirius brought up a lighter topic "So you really sent Molly Weasley her own howler back?"

"I might have made some improvements first." Harry replied with a smirk "But you should have seen Hermione take down Ginny, three seconds flat she hit her with her own hex, vanished the bones in her arm, shaved her head, and put her in a body bind." Harry told his godfather with a look of pride.

"I didn't shave her head Harry, I used a depilatory charm." Hermione corrected her husband.

From the look of pain and shock on Sirius's face Harry figured he was missing something so he shot Hermione a questioning glance.

"The depilatory charm pulls the targeted hair out by the root, so it hurts a lot more than a shaving charm. There is one important reason why witches use a depilatory charm rather than a shaving charm, the depilatory charm prevents hair growth for six months." By the end of her explanation Hermione could barely contain her laughter.

"So not only is she going to have a bunch of those scars for a while, she's going to be bald for the next six months." Harry barely managed to get out before he broke down laughing. This of course set the others off as well.

When they finally calmed down Harry finally got down to more important matters "Okay, we need your help with a few things Sirius."

"Tournament?" Sirius asked.

"No, I've got that covered. We need you to help us get a few things that are necessary to get rid of Voldemort." Harry said, Harry was glad that Sirius didn't flinch at Riddle's made up name. "The reason why he didn't die all those years ago is because he used a piece of black magic to create a number objects known as horcruxes." Here Sirius did shudder "Ah you're familiar with them."

Sirius nodded solemnly "Familiar enough to know better than to look any deeper. That's some seriously nasty stuff, and you said he made more than one."

"Yeah," Harry said "arrogant bastard made six, one is destroyed, one is in our possession already, one is at your old house, one is with Voldemort, one is in Gringotts, and the last one we're going to dangle in front of Dumbledore and hope he bites."

"Why are you leaving one for Dumbledore to deal with?" Sirius asked with a hint of concern in his tone.

"Because if he bites it he'll choke to death on it." Harry said with what could only be described as a predatory grin. "What we really need you to do is run by Grimauld Place and pick up a locket, it's in a display case in an upstairs study. The locket was originally hidden in a cave but your brother stole it from Voldemort, your brother died retrieving it. If Kreacher gives you any trouble tell him you are taking the locket to destroy it, should see him turn right around. Then we just need a plan to get Hufflepuff's cup out of the Lestrange vault and we're good."

"Hufflepuff's cup? How did he get his hands on something like that?" Sirius asked slightly impressed

"Same way he got the locket, stole it from a collector." Harry shrugged.

"If the collector had it insured that might be a solution." Sirius suggested, seeing the confused looks on the teens' faces he elaborated "The only place you can insure a magical item against theft in Britain is at Gringotts, once they pay out the insurance claim the item becomes their property. If you inform them that a piece of Gringotts property is being held illegally in one of their vaults they would retrieve it, probably pay you a nice cut of the insured value too. Of course you might need to buy it off them once they retrieve it."

"Or..." Hermione began, a grin on her face.

"We could offer them some free advice as to who might be willing to pay full value for one of Voldemort's horcruxes." Harry continued, his face sporting a grin to match his wife's.

"Get Dumbledore to pay full value for something the Goblins would probably be willing to sell at a discount. I like the way you two think." Sirius said with a fierce grin of his own "I'll ask Moony to look into whether this collector..."

"Hepzibah Smith." Harry supplied.

"...Had an insurance policy. Hopefully she did because the only other options I can think of would require me to take up the position as head of House Black, which I can't do while I'm on the run from the Ministry. Before I go, I need to know, how do you know all this stuff Harry?"

"How are you at Occlumency?" Harry asked in return.

"Not too good right now, dementors are hell on mental organization." Sirius responded glumly.

"Once you're up to snuff I'll tell you as much as I can, but until then you'll just have to trust me." Harry told his godfather.

"What about you and Hermione? It wouldn't surprise me to find out Dumbledore knows Legilimency." Sirius asked.

"Him and Snape." Harry confirmed, seeing Sirius's face at the mention of his former arch-enemy he continued "He hasn't tried anything yet, but if he does he isn't going to get off lightly. The bastard has it coming. Don't worry about us, I'm covered and Hermione has always been better at Occlumency than me." Which was completely true, it turned out that Hermione's mind was well suited to Occlumency, once she had gotten the mental discipline required to empty her mind she rapidly progressed to the point where no one could enter her mind without serious effort. Luckily her ability with Occlumency had survived the multiple obliviations and subsequent time travel so she hadn't needed two months to be able to defend her mind.

"Alright, if you're sure. You'd better be going, you don't want to get caught out after curfew." Sirius said, giving both of them a quick hug.

"Sirius unlike you Harry and I do not make a habit of getting caught sneaking around at night." Hermione scolded the former marauder.

"Yeah, we haven't been caught since we were first years."

Monday and Tuesday passed without incident, though there were some close calls. Most people were smart enough to leave them alone, but from the looks they got from Ron it was only a matter of time before his innate sense of self-preservation was overwhelmed by his instinctive drive to be an insensitive prat.

Malfoy had limited himself to sneers, but both Harry and Hermione were quite certain that wouldn't last, after all no one would ever accuse Malfoy of being very bright. And the arrogant bastard could only hold his tongue for so long before he had to open his mouth and say the foulest thing that came to his useless little brain. Unlike other times Harry had no intention of letting it go when he did, while Malfoy may not have killed Dumbledore when he had the chance Harry knew it was more from a complete lack of spine rather than any moral compunctions. In short while Malfoy was to cowardly to be properly evil it hadn't stopped him from gladly collaborating with the rape, torture, and even outright murder of complete strangers, as long as he didn't have to get his hands dirty.

Finally Wednesday came and Harry and Hermione were anxious for the day to be over. It didn't help that the last class of the afternoon was History of Magic. Binns just kept droning on for an hour and a half about a goblin rebellion that, even by Binns's standards, was bloody pointless. The fighting had gone on for three months, the wizards forced through a treaty which didn't really give them much but made the Goblins look bad, and ten years later another goblin rebellion was started just to force the Wizards to renounce the treaty. Of course this being Binns it would take a week to finish teaching the first rebellion and by the time he got to the second one three months later only a handful of people would remember that the first one had even happened.

When it was finally over Hermione seriously wished she had agreed to Harry's suggestion of skiving off History of Magic, after all they had already sat through the class and Binns never took roll so they wouldn't get in trouble. In the end though she had been unwilling to take the risk as their classmates would definitely notice and tonight was not a night they wanted people to come looking for them. After a hurried dinner Harry and Hermione made their way back to their quarters where they locked and silenced the room before Hermione brought the completed potions out of the spare bedroom.

The standard method of becoming an animagus involved months of meditation to find one's form followed by learning the transformation over another period of months. The first transformation had to be preformed in the nude because it was artificially induced and no amount of concentration could influence it. The subsequent transformations were all about forcing the body to become accustomed to the transformation, it was a slow process that has to be taken one step at a time because every step takes a toll on the body.

With the potion they were using all those steps would be squeezed into the space of an hour, the first stage of the potion was a psychotropic that would mimic the meditative state that potential animagi would need to master. This would reveal the person's form to their subconscious mind this would allow the next stage of the potion to continue. The next stage was forcing the first transformation, this was always a disturbing sensation for an animagus, and with this potion it was even worse as the lingering effects of the trance could induce hallucinations which were usually quite terrifying. Then the person's body would be forced through hundreds of transformations in the span of a few minutes. The early pioneers of the potion described the sensation as being flayed alive while all your bones were being broken, all your muscles ripped at by ravenous beasts, and your entrails lit on fire.

Unfortunately the information that Hermione had read about the potion had not included the original notes, so as she stripped naked she was not aware of just what it was she was getting into. Without a second thought both teens raised their potions bottles in a toast and downed the entire potion. The only part of the process that was not horribly disorienting, disturbing, or agonizing was drinking the potion, which tasted like chocolate and raspberries. Sadly the teens only had a few seconds to appreciate the flavor before collapsing to the floor as seizures wracked their bodies after five minutes their bodies stopped shaking as they entered a trance. After ten minutes they regained some semblance of coherent thought just long enough to start screaming in terror as their minds were assaulted by images of the flesh melting off their bones while their bodies sprouted fur, their limbs reshaped and their skulls warped. After fifteen minutes they stood their as a pair of wolves, one black one brown, for all of a minute before they returned to their human forms, and immediately began changing back and forth between the two forms in fits and starts. And then the pain began, Harry was no stranger to pain, quite the opposite in fact, all but two dozen of his bones had received at least hairline fractures at one time or another, he had more skeletal remodeling than a retired champion boxer, he had been whipped bloody on more occasions than he cared to remember, he had even taken multiple cruciatus curses from Voldemort, but none of that prepared him for even a fraction of the pain he was now experiencing. For the next half an hour their bodies contorted while they screamed themselves hoarse as they were forced through a complete transformation approximately every ten seconds.

When it was finally over two wolves lay there panting in exhaustion. Not even bothering to try transforming back they simply curled up together and fell asleep on the floor, drawing what little comfort they could from the presence of their mate.

**A/N: Hope you've enjoyed. Before anyone gets on me about skipping the weighing of the wands, if you read GoF the wand weighing was the second Friday after the champion selection, not the first as it is often portrayed in fanfiction.**


	6. Chapter 6

**Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter**

**A/N: Sorry for the delay, my muse apparently decided that it was a bear and wanted to try hibernating, so I had to poke it repeatedly with a sharp stick to get any writing done.**

Harry Potter and Death's Bargain

Chapter 6

The large black wolf lay in the warm grass of a forest clearing, his eyes were closed but he could nonetheless sense the presence of his mate lying next to him. As the wolf lay there a bird landed on his shoulder and began pecking him lightly. The wolf considered moving to teach the bird a lesson, but decided that it was too comfortable where it was, and that as long as the bird stopped soon he would spare its life. Unfortunately the bird did not stop pecking, if anything it became more insistent in its attempts to rouse the wolf, and then the bird began to speak.

"Master Harry, Master Harry yous must be waking up. Master Harry yous be needing to go to class soon."

Harry gave a large yawn and for a moment thought he was still dreaming, true he was no longer in a forest clearing, but he was definitely still a wolf. Fortunately before he could begin to panic the memory of the night before returned to him, unfortunately this memory was brought back by the unrelenting ache that permeated his entire body. Looking around Harry saw that he was curled up on the floor of the main room of his and Hermione's quarters while Roddy was standing at his shoulder and had apparently been attempting to wake him for some time Harry focused on returning to his normal form and the transformation back came as naturally as if he had been doing it all his life. The ache faded a little, but Harry was quite certain it would return if he tried to move too much. Hermione had brewed potions for them to drink to help with the soreness, but he didn't know where they were and he didn't want to go looking for them. So instead he rolled over on the floor to face the brown furred wolf lying next to him.

"Hermione," he said as he reached out and scratched her behind the ear "you need too wake up now Love." Hermione gave a cute canine whimper before burying her head under her front paws "If you don't wake up we'll be late for Arithmancy." That did the trick as her head shot up her eyes cleared of the last remnants of sleep. This sort of rapid movement was apparently a very bad idea as she immediately made another whimper, this one significantly less cute, before she transformed back.

"Uggh," She moaned as she reverted to her normal shape. "Good morning, can you go get the muscle potions off the desk in the spare room?"

Before Harry could respond Roddy popped out of the room and was back with two bottles of purple potion. "Here you go Master Harry, Mistress Hermione." He said as he handed them each a bottle of potion, which Harry noticed as he drank it that it tasted like grape and mint.

"Madam Pomfrey has given me this potion before, but it tasted horrible."Harry commented as he gave Hermione a hand up.

Hermione snorted "That is because Snape brews all the potions for the Hospital Wing. That man deserves his Potions Mastery just on his ability to make potions taste terrible."

After a quick shower Harry came back to the main room to find a full breakfast laid out, obviously by Roddy. Seeing the hard work that the little house elf had obviously gone to reminded Harry of how insistent Hermione had been about house elf rights at this time originally. This lead Harry to think about Hermione's entire crusade for house elves. Two things immediately caught Harry's attention, first was how suddenly and almost randomly the whole thing had begun. Hermione hadn't begun when she learned of Dobby's plight working for the Malfoys, but when she had met Winky who's biggest problem was that she had to perform a task that she strongly disliked. Of the two cases Dobby's was by far more severe, but it had been Winky that had started everything rolling almost two years after learning of Dobby's systematic abuse and torture at the hands of Lucius Malfoy. The second thing that Harry noticed was how suddenly Hermione had dropped the whole thing, for over a year and a half Hermione had been spending a large portion of her free time working on house elf rights, and then suddenly in fifth year she had stopped talking about it. She had hardly ever mentioned anything about it after that, true she had insisted that they be nice to Kreacher, but that was more a general insistence on common courtesy than any political view. Then she had kissed Ron when he suggested they warn the elves, but that was more a response to Ron thinking about any other living creature besides himself. Looking back on that kiss Harry could see that Ron had simply taken advantage of Hermione politely congratulating him for acting like a halfway decent human being.

While Harry was thinking Hermione sat down to join him for breakfast. Looking up Harry decided to confirm his suspicions "Hermione, why did you stop the whole S.P.E.W. Thing?"

"I..." Hermione stopped to think about that very thing for a few moments before she continued "I honestly don't know, when I started it felt like nothing was more important, and then when Voldemort came back that was the only thing more important, but then one day it suddenly wasn't important at all."

"That was a little while after Dumbledore left wasn't it?"

"How did you know that?" Hermione asked, clearly surprised by how well Harry had guessed the time frame.

"Just a guess." Harry hedged while he tried to piece everything together.

"I just wish the elves had been willing to tell me more about how they became enslaved. Every time I asked them about it they suddenly refused to say anything no matter how talkative they had been before." Hermione mused while Harry thought.

"That is because Mister Dumbles is ordering elves not to be telling Mistress Hermione about it." Roddy said as he cleared the dishes from the table, the little elf had clearly been listening to the entire conversation. "If Mistress wishes to be knowing about house elves Roddy would be happy to tell her all about it, but first Master Harry and Mistress Hermione must be getting to class."

"Roddy why would Dumbledore order the elves not to tell me anything? And why are you able to tell me if Dumbledore ordered you not to?" Hermione asked.

"Roddy is not knowing why Mister Dumbles is doing things, but Roddy is able to tell Mistress because Roddy is not a Hogwarts elf, he is a Potter elf."

"Wait, you're a Potter elf?" Harry asked, surprised "Why are you at Hogwarts then?"

"Of course, Roddy is being Potter elf for sixty years now. Roddy is working at Hogwarts since Master James and Mistress Lily died, Mister Dumbles said Master Harry had to be hiding, but that Master Harry would know to call for Roddy if he needed help when he was older."

Hermione could tell that Harry needed to be distracted before his rage at Dumbledore's newly discovered manipulation, so she decided to cut short the discussion "Harry we need to get to class, we'll need to talk more latter Roddy." She said as she she began pulling Harry toward the door.

Harry was sufficiently distracted by pretending to pay attention in class that he was only able to make a few speculations about what Dumbledore had been planning. So far he only had a couple thoughts that made any sense, but he needed to talk to Hermione and see what she thought, and she had pointedly stated that they should wait until their privacy could be assured.

So it was that as soon as Hermione had finished eating her dinner Harry was dragging her back to their quarters. "So, what do you think?" he asked as he closed and locked the door behind him.

"About Dumbledore not telling you about Roddy, or about him ordering the elves not to talk to me?" Hermione asked to buy herself a few moments to reorganize her thoughts from the day.

"Either... both... I dunno, the thing with Roddy makes sense I guess." Harry said as he took a seat on their couch.

"Well, he probably lied to Roddy to keep an eye on him so he didn't seek you out before you came to Hogwarts, and then _forgot_ to mention him to you so you would still have to go back to the Dursleys. I mean if you knew about Roddy would you have ever gone back there?" Hermione asked as she sat down next to Harry. "As for ordering the elves to keep secrets from me specifically, I really don't know why he would do that. He must have had a reason, but what could it possibly be?"

"That's what I was thinking, but it does fit with a few other things. What if this was his first plan to try and keep us apart, going straight to love potions in sixth year was a bit extreme, but if he had already tried something else..."

"What do you mean, how would that have worked at all?"

"Alright think about what I asked you this morning, you said that suddenly protecting house elves was the most important thing in the world to you, in fact for the first couple of days it was so important to you that you weren't even eating. Up until Halloween you spent the majority of your free time researching house elves, and then after my name came out of the Goblet of Fire we spent most of our time trying to prepare for the tournament. What if Dumbledore put a compulsion charm on you, your behavior fits perfectly with what you would expect from someone who was being compelled."

"Of course," Hermione continued finally picking up Harry's train of thought "He must have overpowered the charm at first and he had to dial it back after I stopped eating. He must not have expected your name to come out of the Goblet, and if it hadn't his plan may have worked. A compulsion like that would need to be renewed every few days, so that must be why he made sure I was at Grimauld Place almost immediately after school ended, and when he was thrown out of the school he wasn't able to renew it and I just stopped all my efforts. But if he ordered the elves not to tell me anything then whatever they have to say about it must be enough to actually have ended my entire search."

"I guess we'll just have to ask Roddy to tell us about house elves. Roddy" Harry called.

"Yes, Master Harry?" Roddy asked as he popped into existence in front of the teens.

"Roddy," Hermione began politely "Why are house elves enslaved by Wizards?"

"Well, Mistress Hermione" Roddy said slowly clearly deciding how best to answer "Enslaved isn't being the best word for what elves is. House Elves is being the last remnants of the True Fey."

Seeing that Harry was about to ask a question Hermione explained "The True Fey were a number of different races of faeries and elves of immense power. Historians have speculated on how much the True Fey interfered with early human civilization, but most of them disappeared around the fall of the Roman Empire. Most pixies, nixies, and faeries you see nowadays are descended from the True Fey and any of a number of lower creatures."

With Hermione's explanation complete Roddy continued "House Elves was the servant caste of the Fey, working for the High Elves and Faerie Lords. When the rest of the Fey disappeared from this world House Elves was left behind, without the Faerie Lords to provide elves with magic to sustain them elves sought out humans with magic so's they could survive. But House Elves is still Fey and are bound by our nature, and the first Law of the Fey is that anything received must be repaid, Witches and Wizards give magic so House Elves must be repaying them. Without magic elves is dieing, and so the bargain was made; House Elves would bind themselves to Wizard families, and would serve them in the way they served the Fey before them."

"But what about Dobby and Winky? They're both free, Dobby has been free for over a year and as far as I know he's still fine." Hermione asked.

"Dobby be playing a dangerous game, he is being free of Malfoys, but he is still bound to a Wizard but the Wizard is not knowing. Winky is dieing because she has lost the bond to her family, and nothing will be able to save her, she feels the obligation to serve her family still and will never be able to bond with another family."

"Why is what Dobby is doing dangerous?" Harry asked, concerned for the little elf.

"Because Dobby is receiving magic, but is not repaying it. Since Dobby is not serving his family in the normal way anything they ask of him he must do, no matter what it is. If Dobby had chosen a bad Wizard he could be forced to act as a spy or assassin or to throw away his own life. House Elves is making bargain so that they would be kept safe from doing things that would put them in danger and stop Wizards from using House Elves to harm other Wizards."

As Roddy explained what could happen to Dobby Harry realized exactly why Dobby had always helped him whenever he needed anything. "He bound himself to me, didn't he?" Harry finally asked aloud.

"Yes he did Master Harry." Roddy replied "If Roddy may, for Dobby's own good he must begin working for the Potter family properly, before he owes you too much."

"What could he do, Hermione and I are here at Hogwarts and don't need two House Elves working for us here."

"Roddy will take him to the Potter ancestral home at Eagle's Peak, he can begin restoring the house and grounds for now. It will be many months before it is ready for you, but I will take you both there when it is ready." Roddy explained. Harry nodded his consent and Roddy popped away.

As they lay in bed latter Hermione turned to Harry and spoke the thoughts that had been on her mind ever since Roddy had told them about House Elves "I can't believe how foolish I was about House Elves. They kept telling me they didn't want to stop working for Wizards and I just assumed that I knew exactly what was right for them without even knowing what was really going on."

"It wasn't your fault, Dumbledore made sure you wouldn't be able to find out what you needed to know, all you did was try to help those who you thought needed help." Harry reassured her as he held her close.

The next day was Friday, and it was an important Friday. It was the day of the Weighing of the Wands and the day Malfoy had cursed Hermione's teeth. Harry and Hermione weren't sure whether Malfoy was going to try cursing Harry this time, but both agreed if he did that Hermione would take the curse so that she would have a reason to get her teeth fixed by Madam Pomfrey.

Their early classes passed quickly and soon they found themselves walking down to the dungeon corridor with the other Gryfindors in their year. Apparently Malfoy had in fact gotten up the courage to make his badges as Harry could see them when he first entered the corridor and Malfoy broke away from the gaggle of Slytherins to have a go at Harry.

"Like them Potter?" Malfoy asked as he flashed his badge at Harry with it's vibrant letters proclaiming SUPPORT CEDRIC DIGGORY – THE REAL HOGWARTS CHAMPION "And this isn't all they do," Malfoy sneered "Look!" as his badge changed to read POTTER STINKS.

Harry looked down at the badge and said, his voice dripping with sarcasm "How insultingly... mediocre. Honestly Malfoy I've heard better insults from muggle four-year-olds." Harry shook his head with mock disappointment "I really expected better of you."

Malfoy had expected Potter to get angry, then he could just wait a couple of seconds for Professor Snape to come out and punish him for some stupid little thing, but Potter hadn't gotten angry, instead he had _dared_ to insult him. This could not be allowed to go unchallenged, so Draco Malfoy, the seventh _worst_ student in his year, pulled his wand on Harry and Hermione Potter, the sixth and first _best_ students respectively. This he would decide later, while convalescing in the Hospital Wing, had been a serious mistake.

What started as a surprise attack quickly degenerated into a straight-up beat down on the blonde Slytherin. Malfoy raised his wand so it was pointing straight at Harry's face and nearly shouted "_Densaugeo_". Unfortunately he had stupidly waited until his wand was fully raised before beginning his incantation, thereby giving Harry ample time to raise his left arm to push Malfoy's wand away, sending his first spell over Harry's left shoulder where it hit Hermione in the face and caused her teeth to begin to grow. While Malfoy was realizing that he probably shouldn't have gotten as close as he had Harry was drawing his own wand, however unlike Malfoy he didn't wait until it was fully raised to start casting spells and managed to get off four spells during his wands trip to pointing right between Malfoy's evil little eyes. The first spell was a simple piercing charm, originally designed as a utility spell for putting holes through objects with minimal effort, it had been used as a basic combat spell for centuries due to its simple incantation and minimal wand movement, the charm hit Malfoy in the foot causing severe pain as it drilled a neat half-inch hole through his foot. The second spell was a bone breaking jinx which impacted with his kneecap, instantly shattering it and further increasing Malfoy's discomfort. The third spell was a punching hex to the stomach, another basic combat spell that was commonly used by Aurors since it was considered a non-lethal spell. Finally as Malfoy's legs collapsed under Harry's assault Harry finished off with a highly overpowered stinging hex to the face, which left Malfoy looking as though he had been stung in the face by a bee the size of a medium sized dog.

As Harry was finishing his last spell Snape came billowing out of his classroom and demanded to know what had happened. The Slytherins all began to explain loudly how Harry had attacked Malfoy without provocation while the Gryfindors proclaimed Harry's innocence. When someone, Harry thought it might have been Seamus, stated that Malfoy had started it by hexing Hermione Snape, who had already seen what effect the spell in question had done simply sneered at Harry and said "I see no difference". Unlike last time Hermione didn't run off crying after having been insulted by a professor, instead she stood by her husband as Snape launched an assault against Harry's mind with legilimency.

The one time Harry had ever successfully thrown off Snape's mental attack he had reversed it and gained a quick glimpse of Snape's mind, this time though things were very different. When it had happened in Harry's fifth year had, at least in theory, been teaching Harry occlumency, even if his methods would be considered both idiotic and barbaric by anyone who had received any training in the art. Therefore Snape had been at least a little prepared for the possibility that Harry might reverse the attack and had maintained some defenses. Also he had been using a wand which gave him a greater level of control. This time though Snape had no real control after he had launched the attack, and in his arrogance and hatred had left no defenses behind in case Harry was able to block him. The moment Snape's mental probe reached Harry's mind it was stopped instantly as if it had run into a solid stone wall. In that instant of confusion Harry was able to push back, metaphorically steam-rolling the disoriented Snape right back into his own mind and giving Harry another look into the Potion Master's mind. In a matter of seconds Harry had ripped through every single passive defense Snape had like they were wet tissue paper, and unlike last time he was not met with a few snippets of memory, he was met by a profound understanding of Severus Snape, and what he understood disgusted him. Snape's childhood had been rough, there was no denying that, but it was still better than Harry's by a wide margin, and where Harry had striven ever since to prove his family wrong in every way Snape had decided to take revenge, for the wrongs his father had heaped on him, against the entire world. Harry had seen Snape's memory of first meeting a young Lily Evans, but when he saw it within Snape's mind he understood the thoughts and motivations behind the actions, he had seen a young girl who had power she didn't understand and he could explain to her, in exchange he would take her devotion and in the process he would take the one thing she had that he could never have, a happy family. Snape had systematically isolated Lily from her sister rewarding every step away from her family with some new tidbit of information about magic. When they received their Hogwarts letters he had gone on about the wonders of Slytherin and how all the other houses were less prestigious, knowing all the while that Lily would never be allowed into Slytherin with her muggle heritage. After the sorting Snape had remained friends with Lily while pushing away anyone else who would be her friend. With his indoctrination of her before school had started and his continued isolation of her afterward it took her three years for her to make any other friends at Hogwarts, and even then it was only because Snape had already begun down the path to joining the Death Eaters and had to devote time to them and not to keeping Lily isolated. Finally in their fifth year he had been at her because she had been studying for the OWLs with the friends she had made in Gryfindor instead of with him, which led to the outburst following the DADA OWL which had ruined their friendship permanently. Snape of course had not seen it this way, he saw it as Lily, who by all rights belonged to him after so much work cultivating her devotion, betraying him. When he had asked Voldemort to spare her it had not been for love as he had told Dumbledore, it had been in hopes that the destruction of her family and life would leave her broken and defeated so she would be easily controlled as she had as a child. His hatred of James Potter stemmed from the fact that James had dared to pursue that which Snape saw as his property, Lily. James had not sought out a conflict with Snape he had simply retaliated against Snape's attacks. His hatred of Harry was due solely to the fact that Harry was a physical manifestation of his greatest defeat, that he had lost Lily to James Potter. Snape was a user and a traitor, he had used Lily at great cost to herself and he used the Headmaster to take his revenge on Harry, he had betrayed Voldemort the moment he didn't get exactly what he wanted and the only reason he hadn't betrayed Dumbledore yet was that the opportunity had not yet presented itself.

In looking into Snape's mind Harry also learned every single sore spot in Snape's psyche, every emotional wound left to fester in resentment or scabbed over and scarred by rationalization. He knew everywhere to poke and prod to cause the man pain, and if it had been anyone other than Snape he probably would have never used any of it, but this was Severus Snape, and he deserved every ounce of suffering that was coming to him.

Snape didn't notice the spell that Harry cast, creating a small bubble of privacy where only the two of them could hear what was said. He also didn't realize exactly how much Harry had learned in his brief sojourn through his mind. "Detention, Potter" He sneered still so self assured even after he had been mentally curb stomped by Harry.

"No." was the only response he got.

"What did you say?" Snape snarled back.

"I said no, you worthless, disgusting worm." Harry replied, before Snape could respond though Harry continued "You think you're so tough and powerful, waiting behind corners to take points or give detentions, like every petty little act of childish vengeance somehow makes your life a tiny bit less pathetic. You Severus Snape are an evil disgusting little boy who has refused to ever grow up. You think the world owes you for your pain and suffering? That it owes you for every bruise, every broken bone your father gave you? The truth is you _deserved_ it Snape. Your father was right, you were a worthless, useless, disgusting parasite and look how well you've proved him right. Every time you've taken your revenge on the innocent you've only proved how right he was to hate you. I have taken the measure of your soul Severus Snape and you disgust me. This is your only warning, if you _ever_ cross me or mine again I will destroy you, I know every secret you hide in that cesspool you call a mind and I will take great pleasure in using every single one of them against you." Before Snape could respond Harry had take Hermione's arm and was leading her to the Hospital Wing.

An hour later Harry and Hermione were sitting in the Hospital Wing waiting for Madam Pomfrey's permission for Hermione to leave. It had taken all of twenty seconds for Madam Pomfrey to fix Hermione's teeth, but she till insisted that Hermione wait in case there were any complications. Suddenly Colin Creevey came bursting through the doors to inform Harry that he had to go to the Weighing of the Wands. Harry kissed his wife goodbye before following the excitable third year.

The room they entered was the same one as before and the scene was almost identical, with the only exception being that Rita Skeeter immediately came right at Harry asking for an interview before dragging him off into a closet. As she pulled out her acid green quick-quotes-quill Harry stopped her. "You won't be needing that." Harry informed her "In fact I'm quite certain you won't want any record of this conversation ever having taken place. Did you know that the penalty for being an unregistered animagus is a ten thousand galleon fine? And that if you are unable to pay that fine you could see as much as two years in Azkaban? Worse yet, due to the way the laws are written if you had ever used your form before registering it to make money you could be charged with the 'use of illegal magic for personal gain'? The sentence for which is five years per offense. And if they can prove malicious intent the penalty increases to ten years per offense. Of course proving malicious intent would also open you and the _Prophet_ to charges of libel and defamation which could result in hundreds of thousands in damages being awarded. And let's be honest, with all the enemies you've made in the Ministry all they need is an excuse to come after you. So, if you don't want to die in prison you will keep your nose out of my business or I will _crush you like a bug_, and tell your editor that he better not send some other reporter after me or I'll finger him as an accomplice to your crimes and he can join you in Azkaban." Harry then left a thoroughly stunned Rita Skeeter in the closet.

The rest of the Wand Weighing ceremony went exactly the same, though with slightly fewer pictures being taken as Rita urged her photographer to hurry up so they could leave. As the ceremony ended Dumbledore pulled Harry aside, Snape obviously hadn't had a chance to tell Dumbledore what had happened as Dumbledore didn't immediately tell Harry off.

Dumbledore had been trying to talk to Harry for days, he needed to understand what had changed so suddenly and what it would mean for his plans. In the immediate aftermath of Harry's name coming out of the Goblet of Fire Dumbledore had pushed off a lot of work and questions to adjust his plans for Harry being in the Tournament, just as he was deciding on the best course of action McGonagall had come to inform him that Harry had somehow gotten married to Miss Granger. This of course had caused him to set aside his entire weekend to adjust his plans again, only for those plans to be ruined by the youngest Weasleys' reactions to the news of their marriage. He had ended up planning and re-planning until midweek, by which time everyone involved in the Tournament was demanding answers for a number of complications that arose from having four champions instead of three. This on top of all his other work had prevented him from taking any action in regards to Harry Potter until now.

Before Dumbledore could say anything though Harry laid his trap "Oh good Professor, I've been meaning to come talk to you. The other night I had another dream about Voldemort. He was telling Wormtail to go to some shack, he said that 'because of Lucius's mistake' he would need to 'make sure the others are still safe'. He said that Wormtail was to look for a ring there, he said that the ring was a gold ring with a simple black stone in it that had a triangle with a circle and a line in it engraved on the stone. He said something about having to move it as soon as his plan was complete. I have no idea what he was talking about, but I figured you would want to know."

"Thank you for telling me this Harry." Dumbledore said as a wistful look came over his eyes at the thought of finally being able to claim the resurrection stone. Deciding that his other plans could wait for a while he sent Harry on his way.

**A/N: Again, I'm really sorry to all of my readers who have been waiting for me to update my stories, hopefully I will have another chapter of this or a new story for the Vault in the next week or so.**


	7. Chapter 7

**Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter**

**A/N: After the last chapter I got a few comments about Harry's statements to Snape, particularly his comment that Snape had deserved the abuse he received as a child. To be clear, I do not think that any child deserves abuse of any kind, child abusers are monsters who should rot in prison for the rest of their miserable lives. Harry's comment was not reflective of an actual opinion, merely a statement designed to cause Snape as much mental anguish as possible, in response to the very real evil that Snape has gladly perpetrated on Harry, his family, and the rest of the world.**

**Chapter 7**

"Harry, what in the world did you say to Snape?" Neville Longbottom asked Harry as he and Hermione sat down for dinner in the Great Hall.

Harry had just picked Hermione up from the Hospital Wing following the Wand Weighing and they had not yet had a chance to talk about what Harry had seen or said during his confrontation with Snape. Harry had spent the time since the incident perusing Snape's memories and his thoughts to build a fuller understanding of the man, all the while wishing he could stop and forget everything he had learned. As he looked at Neville he considered just how much to tell the boy about what had happened, on one hand Neville deserved to know the truth about Snape, especially as it involved his parents, on the other hand though the truth would only cause him pain and may have caused a violent reaction from Neville toward the greasy Potions Professor.

"I simply informed him that I was in a position to see him in serious trouble for a number of things in his past, and that if he did not moderate his behavior that I would... make things difficult for him." Harry said with a small smile.

"You threatened Snape?" Neville asked, surprised at Harry's nerve.

"No, of course not. I simply helped him understand that antagonizing me in the manor he has previously would not be in his best interests."

A few other people asked Harry for more specific details of what he said to Snape, but he avoided revealing anything else, though he did manage to piece together an idea of how the Potions class had proceeded after he and Hermione had left. Snape had stood in the corridor without moving or speaking for somewhere between thirty seconds and five minutes, depending on who told the story, before he simply swept into his classroom without speaking. He then simply wrote the instructions for the potion on the board and sat down. He didn't move from his seat or say one word throughout the entire lesson.

When they finally broke away from all the questions at dinner Harry and Hermione went back to their quarters. Harry told Hermione exactly what had happened, and what he had said to Snape. Hermione was shocked at the venom in some of Harry's statements, until Harry better explained just what kind of man Snape was.

"The man is utterly reprehensible, he has no conscience, no regard for any human being outside of himself. He keeps a list of enemies in his head and spends all his free time coming up with more and more horrible ways to kill everyone on that list. The worst part is that the top section of that list is everyone who he blames for the death of my mother, not because he really cared about her, but because as far as he is concerned they stole his property from him. Have you ever wondered why he treats Neville the way he does? It's because he blames Neville partly for what happened, he somehow thinks that Neville is at fault for not being targeted first instead of me. He blamed the Longbottoms too, until he managed to get the Lestranges to go after them. He blames me for being born and for being the subject of the prophesy. if he didn't believe that I'm the only person who could defeat Voldemort he would have killed me years ago." Harry ranted, hoping that finally saying it out loud would get the images out of his head.

"So what are we going to do about him?" Hermione asked as Harry calmed down, being sure to emphasize the 'we'.

Harry shrugged "I warned him, if he tries anything I know enough to completely destroy him, and I fully intend to go through with it if he crosses me. Other than that I don't know what else we can do."

The next morning Harry was awoken by the strangest sensation, it felt like he was being pulled backwards at a high rate of speed. Turning to look at the clock on his bedside table he was surprised to see the hands spinning backwards. When they had stopped spinning the clock read five o'clock. Harry instinctively knew what had happened, Dumbledore had died. He must have gone after the ring already, and the curse must have killed him on the spot. Since Dumbledore still had extra chances time had turned back to when he was reinserted into the time line. Of course this would still leave him with three more chances, and he would still probably end up cursed so they would need to move quickly to stop Snape from saving Dumbledore, most likely removing another of the old man's chances and hopefully reducing the amount of time he could survive with the curse.

"Hermione, wake up." Harry said as he nudged his wife to wake her.

"What is it?" She asked groggily, not completely awake yet.

"Dumbledore is going after the ring right now." Harry explained as he pulled on a pair of trousers.

This got Hermione's attention and in the blink of an eye she was fully awake, out of bed, and getting dressed. "How do you know that?" She asked as she slipped a t-shirt on.

"I felt him die, and then come back. If I had to guess I would say he came back ten minutes before he died." Harry said as he tied his shoes "That means we only have a few minutes to get down to the Dungeons to slow Snape down."

Four minutes later Harry and Hermione were layering locking and sealing charms onto Snape's office door. Satisfied with their work, Harry and Hermione hid under Harry's invisibility cloak while Harry kept an eye on the Marauder's Map.

"There he is," Harry whispered as a dot labeled 'Albus Dumbledore' suddenly appeared in the headmaster's office "He must have portkeyed in." Suddenly there was a loud banging on the door they had just spent so much time sealing, followed by much swearing. "Any moment now" Harry said, holding Hermione tightly so they wouldn't stick out from under the cloak. The dot labeled 'Albus Dumbledore' had been moving back and forth across the office, but then it stopped, and then it disappeared, and for the second time Harry felt the same sense of being pulled backward. Watching the map he saw Dumbledore reappear before pacing only to leave the map again.

"Did you feel that?" Harry asked Hermione.

"Yeah, that was weird." Hermione replied "Why did I feel it this time, and not earlier though?"

"Dunno, maybe because I was holding you this time." Harry guessed as he watched the map again. Based on how far he thought they had gone back, they shouldn't need to seal the door, but just in case Harry fired another sealing charm at the door. Once again the dot labeled 'Albus Dumbledore' appeared, but this time there was no banging on the door as all of their charms inexplicably failed.

"I guess we can't use the same trick twice." Hermione whispered as Snape ran past them toward the Headmaster's Office.

As Harry and Hermione followed Snape Harry came up with an idea to further reduce Dumbledore's number of chances, but before he could implement it he would need to know how many chances Snape had left. Reaching up to touch his glasses Harry activated the Death Sight and looked at Snape. Snape himself was surrounded by a dull blue light, but above his head was a black number two which was crossed out with a glowing crimson line and next to it was a Crimson number zero. Below those numbers was the number 4962. Harry was slightly confused by the results he got from looking at Snape under the Death Sight. The top number normally showed the number of chances a person had left, but for some reason Snape had lost his two remaining chances. Even Dumbledore, who Harry knew had used up a chance, still only showed a number four the last time Harry had looked at him.

Unfortunately this ruined Harry's plan to trip Snape with a spell as he ran past the fourth floor landing and hopefully causing him to fall to his death. So instead Harry and Hermione just followed along all the way to Dumbledore's office.

Five minutes later they were waiting next to the statue which guarded Dumbledore's office, waiting for Snape to leave the office so they could go in a take both of the Icons in Dumbledore's possession. After another half hour of waiting Snape finally leaves the office, a perplexed expression on his face. Anyone else seeing Snape might have believed that Snape was concerned for Dumbledore's health, Dumbledore himself quite probably believed that, but Harry had seen the truth of Snape's mind. Snape was concerned for what the Headmaster's poor health would affect his plans and intrigued by his newest puzzle in curing the Leper's Curse that now afflicted Dumbledore.

Before the statue could move back into place Harry and Hermione had moved past it and onto the spiral staircase was not moving at the moment as the wards around it had not detected their passage. At the top of the stairs Harry opened the door as quietly as possible and he and Hermione slipped through.

"Hello, Professor." Harry says as he removes the cloak, clearly having caught Dumbledore off guard as the old man is looking out the window.

Dumbledore's confusion was clearly written on his face, none of his wards had been tripped, and all of them had been set to bypass the superior protections of the Potter Invisibility Cloak. These wards were only made possible by the use of the Elder Wand, but there was no way that they could have failed.

"Harry, what a surprise. What brings you to my office this morning?" Dumbledore asked, completely ignoring Hermione who was standing right next to Harry.

Unbidden they both took a seat opposite the Headmaster before Harry replied, "I have come to collect a couple of things." Harry stated simply before holding out his hand. Instantly the Resurrection Stone flew to his hand. This caused Dumbledore to immediately draw his wand, under no circumstances would he allow anyone to hold two of the Deathly Hallows at once. Before Dumbledore could even begin to cast whatever spell he had planned on Harry another wave of Harry's hand saw the Elder Wand turn into black smoke before wafting over to reform in Harry's outstretched hand.

"Professor Dumbledore," Harry gasped in mock disbelief "I can't believe you would draw a wand on a student."

"Harry please return my wand." Dumbledore asked, his tone belying his polite words.

"Albus we both know this wand is not 'your wand'." Harry replied staring the old man down, daring him to respond. "Though I am not surprised that you would refer to it as such. You would claim ownership of a power beyond your comprehension, a power of which you do not even know the origin."

"I know full well the origin of that wand." Dumbledore replied smugly "It was originally owned by Antioch Pevrell and it is the most powerful wand in the world."

"Not quite true Albus, but we will get to that. Tell me, do you know why it is called the Elder Wand?" Harry asked.

"Because it is made from the wood of an elder tree." Dumbledore responded condescendingly.

"Incorrect," Harry said with a smirk "The wand is not made of any wood native to this plane, and the wand is not named after the tree, it is the other way around. You see it is called the Elder Wand because it is exactly that, the _oldest _wand, the _first_ wand. It is the origin of wandcrafting and all wands that have come after it are but pale imitations." At this point Harry examined the Resurrection Stone. Seeing the crack that ran along it, bisecting the symbol carved into its surface Harry raised the Elder Wand to point at the Stone and cast a repairing charm on it.

"Harry that will not..." Dumbledore began, only to be struck dumb as he watched the surface of the Stone ripple like water as the crack vanished. At this point Dumbledore truly began to get scared, he had tried that very thing moments before Harry had entered the room and had no results at all.

"Surprised?" Harry asked "Don't be, you could never have accomplished that, even with the Elder Wand, because you were only borrowing its power until someone like me came along to reclaim it for its true purpose."

"And what, exactly, is its true purpose?" Dumbledore asked trying to buy time to come up with a plan to take the Wand back from Harry.

"To be wielded by one who acts with the full authority of Death, but you in your arrogance sought to become the 'Master of Death' when the truth of the matter is you could never have mastered the other two artifacts you so sorely sought. You see each of these objects," Harry indicated the Wand, the Stone, and the Cloak "acts just as any other object of the same kind in the hands of one who has not mastered it. So the Wand is as good as any other wand until you gain its allegiance by defeating its former master. The Cloak is as good as any other invisibility cloak, but in the hands of its rightful owner, or one who uses it with the owners blessing it becomes all but impossible to see past. I'm guessing that is the real reason why you actually returned it to me for Christmas in my first year, it no longer worked for you as you were supposed to give it to me if my father died. The only way to master the cloak is to be given the cloak by its former master, with full understanding that it is yours to use without condition from that day forth. The cloak belonged to my father, but when he died it became mine, and while I could not claim it until I turned eleven you used it as you pleased, but once I turned eleven the Cloak was no better than any other invisibility cloak. The Stone is again an interesting piece in the average person's hands it is just a rock. Once you have successfully used it once it can be used to call forth any spirit you desire to speak with, but the first spirit must always come willingly, and no spirit _you_ would call would ever come just so you could assuage your guilty conscience."

"But none of that really matters." Harry said before he raised the Wand again and cast a memory charm on Dumbledore. The charm ran straight through Dumbledore's mind removing the memory of the last few minutes and then proceeded to remove every memory of the Deathly Hallows the old man possessed. Dumbledore was left with no idea that he had ever possessed the Elder Wand, no clue why he had put on the ring that cursed his hand, and the memory of calling Harry to his office on this Saturday morning. While the charm did its work Harry quickly hid the Elder Wand and the Resurrection Stone.

Dumbledore blinked twice upon seeing Harry and Hermione sitting in front of him and it took him a few moments to remember why he had called them to his office. Deciding on what he thought was his most likely reason for calling this meeting he began. "Harry, Professor Snape spoke to me about what happened before his lesson yesterday, and I am disappointed in you. You cannot simply threaten your teachers any time they do something you disagree with. You will be serving two weeks of detention with Professor Snape."

"I will have to pass on that Professor." Harry said with a hard glint in his eye. He had suspected that Dumbledore would try a power play like this, which was exactly why he had stuck around in Dumbledore's office rather than slip out while the memory charm had the old man distracted. By doing this now he had the upper hand, Dumbledore did not have a wand on him, and would most likely be only peripherally aware of that fact. While Harry was sure that Dumbledore would have his original wand somewhere it would not be in any place he could get to it quickly enough to get the jump on Harry and Hermione.

"Harry you do not have a choice." Dumbledore responded, the kindly grandfather act he usually played all but gone.

"No Professor, it is you who do not have a choice. You can assign as many detentions as you see fit, but I will not attend any of them. Should you attempt any stronger form of punishment then I shall demand arbitration by the Board of Governors. During that arbitration I would be obliged to reveal the things I discovered when I managed to reverse Snape's _highly illegal_ Legilimency attack. I was not bluffing when I said I knew enough to destroy him Professor, and if you make an issue of this I will gladly do so."

Dumbledore was reeling, he had hoped that Harry would fold under the pressure of being called into his office, but the boy was simply raising the stakes. All that Dumbledore had left was to appeal to the boy's compassion "Harry, Professor Snape should not be judged by his past mistakes, he has spent the last thirteen years trying to atone for them. Everyone deserves a second chance."

It was not Harry, but Hermione who responded to Dumbledore's plea for leniency "Trying to atone?" She asked incredulously "Everything that man has ever done at this school has only strengthened Voldemort's cause. We all know that Voldemort is coming back, and that when he does there will be another war. When that war comes the two things we will need more than anything else is Aurors and Healers. A Potions NEWT is required for both of those careers, and leaving aside the fact that he is quite possibly the worst teacher in this school, his policy of only accepting students who have received an O on their Potions OWL means that NEWT Potions enrollment is at a fifth of what it was before Snape began teaching. Instead of producing more Aurors and Healers we aren't even producing enough to replace those who are retiring. And those that we are producing are by and large Slytherins, who have been conditioned for seven years to be supportive of Voldemort should he return. The fact that you have given all of this your tacit approval should raise serious questions about which side of this war you are really on."

"As for a second chance," Harry said, once his wife had finished tearing Dumbledore's appeal apart. "This is his second chance. The crimes he has committed against my family more than justify any response I choose to take, but I am giving him, and you, this _one_ chance should you or he refuse it or squander it I will destroy you both." Seeing the look of concern on Dumbledore's face Harry elaborated "I saw far more than just Snape's sins yesterday, I saw your involvement in a great number of them as well. I wonder how Augusta Longbottom would react to discovering how it was that the Lestranges really knew where her son and daughter-in-law were that day. I doubt Barty Crouch would be all that forgiving either when he learns that you explicitly ordered Snape to give the information to his son."

Harry smiled as he saw the look of unmitigated terror on Dumbledore's face, that one piece of information could destroy him. Augusta was his linchpin on the Board of Governors, not to mention a force to be reckoned with in the Wizengamot. She would see him out of Hogwarts in less than a day should she learn the truth and he would most likely face criminal charges as well. Those facts becoming known would seriously erode his support, and what support he would have left would be sorely taxed just keeping himself out of Azkaban. Add to that Barty Crouch finding out his involvement in the younger Crouch's arrest, disgrace, and eventual death would only make things worse. While Crouch may not have much power left he still had a few strings to pull and nothing would stop the man from making sure Dumbledore lost everything. In short Harry had him over a barrel with only one secret, and if he knew anything else Dumbledore would probably die in Azkaban.

Deciding that he had no other options available Dumbledore surreptitiously slid open the bottom drawer of his desk where he kept his wand. When he looked down at it he was momentarily confused by the amount of dust that had somehow accumulated, after all he used his wand on a regular basis. As he tried to remember when he had put his wand in there he suddenly had a mild headache before remembering that he had put it in the drawer shortly after returning from Little Hangleton that very morning, and the dust had obviously come from the Gaunt Shack, it was after all the most logical explanation. Dumbledore looked up to find both Harry and Hermione's wands pointed directly at him.

"Headmaster if you reach for your wand I will consider it to be a personal attack, and in light of your past actions against myself and my wife along with your support of an enemy of House Potter I would be fully entitled to use lethal force to defend myself, which I would do." Harry said his voice so cold and steely that Dumbledore did not for one moment doubt that he meant every word of it.

"So unless you want to die today you will close that drawer _slowly_ and then keep your hands on the desk where I can see them." Dumbledore did as Harry instructed him so Harry continued "Now, as I said, this is your second chance as well. Normally I would threaten to kill you if you cross me again, but as you are already dying there would be little point to it, so here is what I am offering you if you restrain yourself from interfering in my life, and tell me every piece of pertinent information about my life that you have thus far neglected to tell me, I will allow you to die with your dignity and reputation intact. If you attempt to interfere or if you are less than completely forth coming and honest I will ensure that you lose everything, and that you go down in history as the most reviled Dark Lord since the founding of Hogwarts. You have until the end of the month to decide."

Before Dumbledore could respond Harry and Hermione had stood up and were walking toward the door. Dumbledore attempted to again reach for his wand, but when he tried to lift his hand from the desk he found it stuck there. When he tried again he felt a jolt of electricity lance through his body, leaving him twitching in pain for a few moments. When the door had closed behind Harry he felt the magic that had held his hands in place dissipate.

Harry pulled Hermione into an unused classroom and proceeded to kiss her passionately. "That spell worked perfectly." Harry told her as they broke apart.

"Thanks" She replied with a smile. Hermione had never crafted a spell before, and she was glad that her modified sticking spell had worked as well as it had. The spell was a combination of a standard sticking charm and a shocking jinx. It was designed to give an ever increasing shock every time the target pulled against the spell. Eventually the shock would be sufficient to knock out an elephant, at which point the spell would finally fail. However the odds of anyone retaining consciousness at that point were pretty slim. The truly ingenious part of the design though was that rather than directly fighting the target the spell redirected their kinetic energy into stored magical energy, which would then be released as electrical energy only to be reabsorbed and stored again. That way the energy requirement to cast the spell was significantly lower than its results would normally require.

"Let's go get some breakfast." Hermione finally suggested after another passionate kiss.

The morning of the First Task had finally arrived, and Harry felt absolutely no nervousness at all, well _almost_ no nervousness. He had a plan, a backup plan, and a back-up, back-up plan. Harry and Hermione were quite certain that the basic plan would work perfectly, but it was dependent on wizards being as stupid as they suspected they were. Unfortunately depending on someone else's stupidity was not a foolproof way to plan, after all fools are far too ingenious when it comes to ruining plans. So they had the back-up plans in case someone had done something which would prevent Harry from making a mockery of the entire tournament.

Harry had warned Cedric about the dragons since Fleur and Krum would still know about them, or more accurately Hermione had passed along a warning from Harry since she had an easier time of getting close enough to him to deliver a warning. Harry had also let slip a concern that transfiguring an animal to distract the dragon would be insufficient since the dragon would easily dispatch a single animal. Harry had been experimenting with his glasses and found that Cedric was not actually on his last chance yet, and had most likely lost his next to last chance in one of the tasks, so he hoped to keep Cedric from sustaining any potentially serious injuries during the tournament.

Somehow Harry still ended up drawing last from the bag, and still ended up facing off against the Hungarian Horntail. He wasn't sure if he was just unlucky or if everyone else had instinctively grabbed the smallest dragon they could find in the bag. So it was that Harry found himself sitting in the Champion's tent waiting for his turn to face off against a dragon. He would much rather be sitting with Hermione, but he was not allowed to sit in the stands, and even though she was his wife she couldn't join him in the Champion's Tent.

So instead Harry sat and thought about how things were going so far with his plans to defeat Voldemort. Sirius had gotten in contact with Remus about looking into Hepzibah Smith's possible insurance policy. So far Remus had only ascertained that she did have a policy of some sort, but not what she had actually insured. Sirius had also told Harry that his own Occlumency was coming along and that soon he should be able to hold out Dumbledore or Snape. They had also told him of their own successful animagus transformations, but had not yet been able to demonstrate them for him. Dumbledore had not yet given any response to his ultimatum, but he still had six days and Harry fully expected at least one more power play before then. Harry and Hermione had also been invited to spend Christmas with Hermione's parents and they had agreed. Both knew of the Yule Ball, but no one had actually announced it and Harry figured he could squeeze concessions from the School and possibly the Ministry in order to assure his attendance.

Finally his name was called and he walked out to face his dragon. As he heard the cannon which signaled the beginning of the task he raised his wand, the holly and phoenix feather one as it was the one he had presented at the Weighing of the Wands and therefore the only one he could use without breaching the magical contract that compelled him to compete. "_Accio Golden Egg._" He called out, making sure that he spoke it loud enough for the entire stadium to hear him. As expected the egg simply flew to his hand. The horntail simply let it fly past her as she could immediately tell it was not one of her own eggs and was travelling quickly away from her. Harry caught the egg and then turned away from the dragon and walked out of the stadium, resisting the urge to make a very rude hand gesture to the judges.

The moment Harry was out of the stadium and on his way to the medical tent Hermione was in his arms holding him tightly and smiling more brightly than she had all month. The plan had worked perfectly. It would have been extremely simple to ward the eggs against summoning charms, after all many everyday products were charmed to be unsummonable, like clothes, money pouches, and wand holsters, but by and large wizards did not consider such things when everything they did not want people summoning came pre-charmed when they were bought. As such when the eggs were obtained from the goblins no one stopped to consider whether or not the goblins had put anti-summoning enchantments on the eggs, and now they looked like fools in front of the world press for not considering the possibility of a champion simply summoning their egg.

**A/N: Sorry this took so long to get written and posted, I've had a lot to do for classes the last month or so. I've decided that I really need to focus on just finishing one story at a time, so this will be the only story being actively worked on for the time being. Sorry to those of you who have been waiting so long for me to continue Master of Time, I promise to get back to it, but not until I finish this story.**


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